ON ALL THE DIFFERENT WAYS TO BE HUNGRY
by Michelle Awad
My front porch
might as well be
Heaven’s Gate, might
as well be a rain forest,
might as well be
a coliseum, an alter,
a library.
A man
walks by
on the sidewalk,
I make eye contact,
and wave, he asks me,
if I have a few dollars
or some change, he
calls me
ma’am, and
I say, no, I’m sorry.
The no is a lie.
The sorry is only
a
half-lie, as sorries
often
are, he waves and
continues on his way,
I notice his sport coat,
his dark-wash jeans,
he’s a little scruffy of
face, but otherwise
he
does not look
to be wanting,
but
what does that mean,
in the grand scheme
of things, I think.
I don’t look
like I cried myself
to sleep.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 3:29 PM UTC
QUARANTINE DAY 6—
by Michelle Awad
I have scratched all the polish
off my nails.
I’m biting them again.
You stare at your phone
and show me
the six-hundredth meme,
and I smile
weakly.
I stare at my computer
screen.
For the first time in over
a year, I write poetry
I have no
intention
of you ever seeing.
I imagine
I feel hungry but cannot be
bothered to eat
the same way
you don’t think about
having *** with me.
Numbly.
Absentmindedly.
Honestly.
You still ask for a kiss
when you have done
a good job.
I thank you for making
lunch again (kiss) I thank you
for bringing me
my charging cable (kiss) I
thank you
because you love me (kiss) you
love me (kiss) and
I feel
guilty
that it doesn’t
seem enough
lately.
Stay inside, they said,
it’s safer, they said.
What a load a ****
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 3:26 PM UTC
GARBAGE SPACE SOUL TRASH
by Michelle Awad
This city
doesn’t do earth sounds,
it speaks
in tongues,
otherworldly garbled
nonsense,
she says
melted sugar,
she says
orange glaze,
don’t listen, there is no
such thing
as listening, open
your mouth, concentrate
on
on the vibrations,
my
bloodstream feels
buoyant,
and willing; this
city says she
was here
before the Ice Age and the
Big Bang. The liquor store
around the corner
sells butterscotch pudding
that’ll knock you dead, and
you’ll say thank you,
but it will sound
like cinnamon.
I was 26
when I moved here,
a little young
for my age, I slept
alone
except for when
I didn’t, I learned
to play the violin
on his heartstrings,
I learned there’s no such
thing
as good whiskey, but
you
don’t drink it
for the taste.
This city
doesn’t do earth sounds,
doesn’t do love songs,
doesn’t do good morning
texts, I tell you—just
a drum beat you hear as
a confession, a sax solo that
needs an RSVP, it’s okay
to be a little less, to be
a little more
than human, when it’s
healthy, just some good
old-fashioned
trash soul space garbage,
some crushed velvet in your
veins, just
goosebumps and
smoke rings, and you’d look
like a lava lamp if they opened
you up, honey. And you only
hear it
if you forget everything you know
about everything, about
language,
and logic, there’s no
room for biology
when she says
lemon zest, she says
turmeric, she says
nape of my neck.
You lick your lips.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 3:23 PM UTC
SOCIAL DISTANCING
by Michelle Awad
I have tried
swallowing
my pride, but my
pride
is jagged of edge
and bitter of taste,
I have
to **** on it
for a while
before
it’ll go down
properly. Too often,
loving myself is like
taking a dry pill,
there is always
this thing stuck
in my esophagus,
and I think maybe it’s
words, so here I am, and
I think maybe it’s
shameful,
so here I am, I
went inside
just now
thinking I’d lay myself
in your lap
without warning,
but the mood
wasn’t right, I don’t know
how else to explain it,
it feels like
we are low on battery,
we need charging,
it’s a
blackout, we’re a city,
I
don’t know how else to
explain it, and how do
you
begin to repair what
is
broken in ways
you
can’t explain? So
instead
I sat on the opposite end
of the couch,
I listened to you
relay
a conversation you were
having
with technology. You
are an excellent translator,
but this isn’t my idea
of communicating. I
decided
to come outside and
write this,
instead of kissing you,
and that sounds crazy to me,
to do anything
instead of kissing you,
that’s ******* crazy, all we
ever
talk about
is this ******* quarantine,
how on earth
do we feel
so far apart lately.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 3:19 PM UTC
ARE YOU THERE ELVIS? IT’S ME, MICHELLE
by Michelle Awad
My grandmother only
cries
in the face of death,
and even then,
it is shrouded in
laughter,
like her body is
rejecting
the notion.
I have come to
understand
that this
is hereditary.
Now.
An appointment card
arrives
in the mail for you,
she breaks down;
“Blue Christmas” plays
through the car stereo,
she breaks down;
she doesn’t sleep, she thinks
she can hear you
moaning and coughing
in the next room. Yesterday,
my aunt asked her
a question,
and she told her
she didn’t know,
to go ask
you.
I remember your hands,
as dandelion wishes, and
the smell of
lawn clippings,
and
a stack of
word search puzzle booklets
on your side table, but
I never catch myself
talking about you
in the present tense.
It's something
I deeply wish
was hereditary.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 3:16 PM UTC
THE WORST PART OF A BREAK-UP
by Michelle Awad
is not the screaming,
not the gut-clenching
holding/un-holding,
fighting
back tears, it’s not the
I can’t do this anymores, or
this isn’t workings, not the
storming out, or the
returning
house keys, or
the picking up your
things,
you left them here,
they’re
in a box on the porch
if you want them back, or I
can give them to Goodwill.
Either way, you have a
week.
The worst part
of a break-up
is
much bigger
much quieter
much later
it’s
that I can’t find
a **** picture
of myself that isn’t
a picture of you,
it’s
deleting them,
it’s
selling those
concert tickets,
it’s unremembering,
phone numbers,
and birthdays, and what
you’d find funny, it’s
wanting to tell you,
it's
the ritual,
the cleansing,
the
things that we
do,
the things that we
have
to do,
to pretend
that
we’re not actually
breaking.3
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 3:14 PM UTC
IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES
by Michelle Awad
I burst
forth,
slimy,
sticky,
slippery,
red,
I never stopped
being red, actually,
crying,
always crying,
maybe that’s why
I try not to
lately,
they gave me
to my mother,
and she laughed,
what the hell
am I gonna
do with you,
my father
was in the room,
or maybe he wasn’t,
probably
he wasn’t,
the second thing
I knew
after the warmth of
the womb
was the coldness of
space. My father,
the Great Collector,
of bar stools,
and gasoline
receipts, of
more women’s children
than he knew
what to do with;
I thank
whatever God
there is
for my mother,
lying there,
slimy,
sticky,
slippery,
red,
because of me,
not unafraid,
but brave,
they gave me
to her,
and she laughed,
what the hell
am I gonna
do with you,
she said, and she never
got an answer
any more
than he did.
She loved me anyway.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 3:10 PM UTC
SUBURBAN LEGEND
by Michelle Awad
He said,
he saw Bigfoot once,
and he waved, or she,
he forgot to ask, but anyway,
Bigfoot waved, and then
went on making footprints
in the forest floor, and he
said, he or she or they
smelled
like the wanton wishes
of every stinking mortal
who walks upright and
has opposable thumbs
and thinks being hairless
of body makes them
anything other than
naked. He said,
he saw a UFO once,
that it wasn’t a plane
or a weather balloon,
or a
reflection in his wire-
framed
glasses, and you
can’t tell him otherwise,
he said
there were no stars that
evening, but it went away
as quickly as it came, like
love, as
fast as the morning, that
a vapor trail of hope
and possibility was all
that remained, he said he
saw
his mother’s face
in
the fading.
He left
before I could tell him
I am no
anomaly, no world
wonder, no mystery,
I am
the place where
things happen, I am
the setting,
I am the North American
wilderness, the
night sky,
the expanse of the
universe,
endless, the lack of
oxygen,
the silence so
deep and vast
and empty it’s the closest
we’ll ever know to the absolute,
ultimate, big, scary
Nothing.
I am Loch Ness.
There’s a monster
inside me
swimming around
that some people
claim
to have seen.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 3:06 PM UTC
MODERN LIVING
after Eileen Myles
In the spirit
of wakefulness
my neighbors
ride their bikes
after making
brunch, together,
wiping sleep from
each other’s
eyes, the dogs
bark
from their balcony,
their
keys jangle
in the wooden gate
as they leave,
and that is the
sound
of modern living.
I sleep too late,
I hate the morning
as if it broke my
heart once, and
maybe it did, back
when youth tasted
like homemade
ice-cream and walnuts
straight off the
tree, and
I didn’t mind
having arms
wrapped around
me. I spent the
simplest days
I will ever know
wishing life were more
complicated, I used
to talk to the sun, it
used to kiss me and
my shoulders
turned red and
that’s how I learned
about pain, about
being betrayed, about
staying inside to be
safe, I used
to tell people
that’s who
I got my hair from,
like it was family. I
swam
in the ocean for
the
first time and
decided
it was
where the whole
world’s tears went
after they fell from
its cheeks, I tasted
the salt
sticking to
my chin and
hoped they all
had
found out how
to be
happy. I didn’t know
how hard
being happy
could be.
I can see why people
take beach trips
to get away, to forget
their troubles, more
and more,
it seems the
only way to feel
weightless
is to submerge
yourself in other
people, have you ever
felt alone
with the tide
at your feet? my
neighbors
come home, and
their dogs stampede
into their front yard,
just fragments,
disjointed shadows
behind a picket fence,
and my neighbors
return inside
to clean the brunch
plates, to wipe the
sweat from each other’s
eyes, and foreheads,
and maybe he
kisses her neck and
tastes
the sea
for a second, and
he sighs
with relief, and that
is the sound
of modern living.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 3:01 PM UTC