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Apr 2018 · 172
marjoram
c quirino Apr 2018
how i will come to haunt your home
is bound to surprise even you, buddy.
i will attach myself to every corner,
my hair intertwined with plaster,
slowly forming indelible bonds with the walls of your home.

in time, the walls will become me.
they'll convulse, strong and heavy, if not untested,
loom they will,
in each cold breath that draws steady from the vents
c quirino Apr 2016
a certain clarity steps in from the night.
it shakes off a damp umbrella and fastens its closure.
the small ‘clip’ echoes in the hall.

or maybe it’s a snap.
clarity lays the umbrella down and there is rain water at my feet.

that these arms should house me should be plaster.
they’re all i know. at their ends are fingers that cannot bend,
yet i press my hand against them,

caress a dormer window or crown molding
            and they’d feel more compassionate.

but one doesn't need a home to love you back. there is no soul residing in between these walls. no greater being within the woodwork.

it left one morning, a note scrawled and barely legible made its way to the counter, and almost fell, november-soft under the garbage.

it left no forwarding address. but a quiet light comes and goes. flickering in its tiny dagger stabs at the interiors of your eyelids. let it flood the room and keep nothing covered.
Dec 2015 · 286
stock, one
c quirino Dec 2015
i never really appreciated the wealth of light afforded to me.
yet i still have cravings,
for graceless dormers,
naked and looming.
quartered divisions with their faint, finger panes
intersecting in the middle of my forehead.

i really love the feeling of walking through a wooded path at night.
maybe not wooded, not so looming and treacherous.
but a place much warmer in light.

i live by light.

i remember the city because of its light.
its muddled outlines,
pin box interiors you only see for brief moments in passing.
eight by ten foot worlds
partitioned only by your doing.

what other place can make sense to you,
so perfectly that you tesselate within it,
one multi-minded collection of elements
in swarms of others,

what place,
besides the one that drives you up a ******* wall.
c quirino Sep 2015
She followed stitches in the road
and they led her, finger ( )
straight into the mouth,
where she tumbled, eave on ear,
careening down some flesh corridor,

emergence is its own special hell.
born twice, corps within corps,
so that a doyenne is entombed in my screaming infant.

when he lifts me, i rise, airborne swimming,
and i cannot see his arms.


what do you see if you they’re not before your eyes?

a clear sky,
its only blemish are size 8 words i cannot make out.
they ripple behind a flea-sized plane.

i see the sky.
a clear sky, wide and naked and unashamed.
Aug 2015 · 654
olive on olive
c quirino Aug 2015
i am silent today like i am everyday.

what do you say, then.
in its stead what shape are your lips?
are they still that red,
the one i could never see replicated on the outside.

my right hand won’t stop shaking,
its fingers reject central authority from their tips.

the sky from down here,
trembles in step.

you know what no one really brings up?
what.
how the flux never wanes,
the seconds evaporate almost instantly,
hitting the pan and running upward,

then minutes, and the rest of them follow.
c quirino Jun 2015
outside, it smelled of canned peaches,
and i knew the world was fertile again,
or i was fertile.
no one is more boundless ,
simply surviving a passage of time.
intimate nothing from gazes encountered,
no loss, and no redemption.

i’ve been standing at a folded alter for four years,
laundered, stiff white collars in iron maiden

pin ****** cascade,
it’ll be just the tip.
lol.

someone once told you to cover the bedroom mirrors before sleeping,
they’ll drain you of life by morning otherwise.
maybe it was the gourds. the ones that looked like birdhouses,
eye-socket pools gouged into dormant skin,
or you think it’s dormant.
you never assume your vegetables to be predatory.

i only ever feel most like myself in the mornings, immediately after waking,
and around 6:00 pm after i’ve peeled off my face.
c quirino Jun 2015
when was the last time you howled with the wind
your voice curled upward,
jowls hadn’t formed yet,
will they ever?
will you roll out from under that lens?
the one slowly pressing itself down on you,
it’ll crush you in your sleep,

the last thing you’ll think, unfortunately,
is of its efficacy,
graceless, effortless motion of glass the weight of the world,
reducing you

but

don’t stop.
not until you fumble around in the bedside drawer,
(you know the one)
hardspine thick and full of fleshlights,
receipts, and ticker-tape fortunes.

within it, is the melted resin bracelet,
the one meant for dangling above a 3 am fire,
so its klein blue string burns,
slow, gentle flame against those wrists.

this is what it feels like.
there’s a reason the birds stir a little after midnight,
winged extras, lovers, and postal workers,
former mothers, pageant queens, and cannibals.
they’re here to remind you to rebuild that place within,

there’s a dock there,
fixed in a lake,
on it is our covered vessel,
its wooden frame forming a muslin tent.
sleeping, three minutes before sunrise.
Sep 2014 · 290
Untitled
c quirino Sep 2014
it melts on your tongue,
liquifying with the house’s undulation.
brick-bone dancing matron.

in the house of my mother,
i light one candle and leave it,
lit and flickering,
sweetly rotating with its pin ***** flame.

some wonder, quite casually, if this‘fire’ has organs,
limp, molten flesh sacks within its walls.
tendrils of light that could drape,
lover heavy astride the chair.

limp and languid fingers that barely escape to the surface

how far you were able to see,
what it must be like,
to live at its edge,
seeing an other place similar to yours.
Aug 2014 · 438
5AD7433F33E4BB03
c quirino Aug 2014
it’s very easy to be a narcissist in this place. everything we surround ourselves with should be an extension of ourselves, but herein lies the interesting part. “ourself” is never tangible. there is no specific visceral mass within our bodies that can be named “ourself.”

“ourself” resides in the spaces between tissue, and even within them, it is not so much its presence or absence, but the formation itself, and not the building, no stone or lattice, but the way and manner it was presented before “ourself.”
May 2014 · 477
cecile, I
c quirino May 2014
that you would let me be your harbor.

grass blades gnaw at my backside,
they don’t mean to bite, they’re just fervent in their suckling.

finger knotted
mirror palm

it always felt more complete when it was just the three of us.
you, me, and the vast, faceless

upon him, you and i finger painted all these parallels.
places we would never see,
rabbit warren cabins we’d never trouble ourselves to clean,

big, stupid piles,
bodies lie vine tangled,
but something halcyon, no more.

“look around the warren.
take what you can carry, because this is the last you’ll see of this room.”

over time, after the border closure,
after the parades of death squads,
faces of our brothers and lovers cloaked in ivory.,

we learned to condense three people into one.
we learned to say less, our words short and curt,
save for hours after, or in between,
when we could warm our skinny wrists over an open flame,
dreaming of the heavy, 72-hour lemongrass day
when it was all just painted doors and blue lights as far as we could touch,

“look around the warren.
take what you can carry,
this is the last you’ll see of this room.
we won’t be back”
Dec 2013 · 513
white morning
c quirino Dec 2013
what is said of spiritual death is rarely ever without merit. A life continues, but it is no longer yours. those breaths escaping, ear-warmth in december, are not yours. maybe not in the sense that your body is yours. it never was. iris seeks out busy patterns, *******-splattered canvas in cacophonous {splendor}. within them is the pair of arms often dreamt of, clutching a more blithe, unaware ether of one’s self.

what is ‘regal’ can no longer be claimed. yet infilling begins, where once vacancies stood, cavity gape and naked, temples of our majesty are quietly born on white-robed mornings.
Nov 2013 · 425
business people no. 50
c quirino Nov 2013
I was caught in the wheel for 27 days.
my ring finger, left hand,
just below the knuckle.
flesh lay threaded through spokes.

lying there,
blood in cascade within my veins, away from the finger tip.
a bustling commute inside of me.

eyes upward, fixed there, even in rain.
overflowing in showers,
these bubbling iris pools.

I’ve had my fill,
and very swiftly i go.
on the mornings of journeys,
hesitation finds no home in me.

the only request i have is for a graceful exit,
swift, and defiant.
c quirino Jul 2013
one is in a constant state of reinvention,
molting,
feathers in cascade,
barely hiding ****** and birthmark,
no such garment exists.

one is constantly healing itself.
save for other days,
when direct sun poses no more threat.

eyes fixed to a middle distance,
where one sits shiva,
avoiding the partial gaze of mirrors,
windows through which one may edit,
very slowly, to draw out its best features,
ignoring  revulsion and inequity found throughout.

one lives each day worth half of its potential,
other halves wasted,
excess fruit flesh clinging to rind.

one faces itself,
and sees not oneself,
but the ones that entered, paused in unity, and left,

one should not see exits where there are none.
Jul 2013 · 1.9k
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
c quirino Jul 2013
the marble people stare not at you,
behind you, not at anyone in particular.
hunched, and clutching their glasses, thirst unquenched

there aren’t many of them now,
originally, there were thought to be thousands,
breathing quietly among us,

after the man has paid dowry for our daughter,
i turn to her and whisper,
“i think i’ve lost my spirit,
misplaced it, otherwise it flew from me,
escaped through my mouth while I was sleeping.
it slipped through the barely lit crack of parted lips
Jul 2013 · 532
no. 34
c quirino Jul 2013
up here on the right,
no, no, you can stop here.
I don’t mind walking the extra twenty feet.

I had a nice time,
it was quite the evening,
especially when the moon descended overhead,
staring us both in the eye,
rough lover, sunday morning, and my chin’s all whisker scratched.
is some body you’ll never touch allowed to make you feel that way

centuries earlier,
people staggered their sleep,
dormant for three or four hours,
and around midnight, they’d wake,
swathed, international blue moon lit
while lovers were conquered,
and neighbors addressed as if it were morning,
fresh and jovial, short-lived land angels
connected to their bodies,
to our moon, to floors,
turning in them,
below them,
spatially, elsewhere,
never having left the gap between your forefinger and temple
under duress
Jun 2013 · 814
officelady
c quirino Jun 2013
Her, never having known ‘her,’
the idea,
‘her’
becomes an irregularity for me.

it is not part of my schema. that vantage of man,
as the synthesized post-******.

nevertheless,
her frame rises up stairs,
petaluma sad wink
watch her disappear behind the half wall.

furtive glances into you.
lone, and left wandering.

when we travel along our vectors,
we fail to consider that our bodies are not whole, complete entities,
they are porous, and the closer in,
do we realize that borders of flesh and air,
are indeterminable.
Jun 2013 · 340
vivian
c quirino Jun 2013
i don’t know what made me choose this tree, specifically.
it did not choose me.
i swear, i could feel it trembling in my hands on the train home.
a canary frightened of slaughter,

it’s calmed down by now.
trees have no memory of goodbye,
or maybe that’s not true. they’re the higher beings,
i’m thinking they know something we don’t.

“whichever you choose. you live here.”
“nonsense. I live only in my body. Outside of that,
I control nothing and that alone thrills me.”
Jun 2013 · 1.6k
bd
c quirino Jun 2013
bd
buddy didn’t tell me buddy was a two-spirit.
buddy rode into town,
blonde-horsed and golden god,
of my people’s cargo cult.

this was buddy’s second incarnation.
once before,
buddy rode into town,
we knew nothing of gold,
or time beyond the lengths of fingers.

buddy stood before us,
buddy showed us ourselves,
our unspoken intentions,
anointed us in oils,
buddy always said,
look up each night,
on a supermoon,
i leave and return within you endlessly.
May 2013 · 870
windswept colossal
c quirino May 2013
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One thing I would miss,
the elegiac street names.
angora, moyamensing,
escaping my red-berry throat
as if terms invented by a willow tree,
its ancient, parched lips defining first utterances.

from her droning tongue,
terms incomprehensible.
the closest we’ll come to some ‘true name.’

she speaks in our words now. they enter us from all around,
words seeping in through porous flesh.

she reveals my truest intent.
looks at it through her leaves,
but will not tell me,
because she has none of the authority to do so.



to you, i want to look like home.
arms, peripheral walls.
unfortunately, inside you’ll find the wings of the stately home cordoned off,
closed to the public.

my great tragedies lie in the thought of you having no curiosity about the events of those rooms.

feel free to do with the house what you’d never do anywhere else.
you’ll find no temple here.
no servants’ prayer room populated by makeshift pews.
let so many fall from its windows howling with competitive laughter,
each guest trying to outdo the last.
to see who can be the most clever about getting the joke.
c quirino May 2013
you want everything to look like the setting sun,
or a marble bull,
charging at your viscera.

what draws you to these lines?

nothing. i drift heavy,
only toes touch land, wood, and sea.
lustful, i was, so bound to myself i lie
in some endless death march,
bayonet, tracing silhouettes into my backside.
girls from home, mostly.
a mother,
friend,

what salvation are you seeking?

not salvation, only time.
seconds, to turn into minutes,
to somehow, without blinking
bind themselves into one life.

i’ll see what i can do.
May 2013 · 880
blue urn
c quirino May 2013
It tapers towards the bottom,
inverse conical,
mimicking an egg.

it is a tradition among these people,
to have in their hands,
even in youth
the urn that will one day house them.

their compacted fingers, lips, and eyes,
in lacquered earth bounty.

the urn that will one day house my ashes will sit on my shelf,
naked and ready.
c quirino May 2013
charge at my viscera.
take tender care to not tip our boat,
for we will not fall,
but glide, listlessly into sea.

know what it is to thirst for nothing to surround you.
to rise and fall,
aether-bouyant through axes unknown.
which direction does your spinal fluid flow?
you’ll be uncertain.
only i know.
and i won’t tell you.

you don’t have to.
May 2013 · 435
earth bounty
c quirino May 2013
i am ebinezer el-shabazz,
staff in hand, watch me plow field and wife.
stand behind me,
father leading progeny through earth bounty born of my hand.
you must stay behind.
i will protect you from the sun.
enclose you within gossamer wings,
you will ask why light rips through, still.
i say it is because you are not in your place of yes.
“but father’s arms are always a place of yes.”
i will devour you before your mind ripens,
for i do not want you to see mine gone so foul.
Apr 2013 · 693
Cafuné
c quirino Apr 2013
there are words in other tongues
for the things we do here,
which careen voiceless from ourselves,

we don’t mean for them to.
they escape, unlearned movement
repressed by nothing save for the eyes of others.

there exist lines in another direction,
an alternate plane unseen
silhouettes of fingers running through hair.
Apr 2013 · 712
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
c quirino Apr 2013
voices occur now,
or sprout up, one next to another one,
rowhouses built between
the natural divets and gaps
in our sound.

at first the male one starts chanting,
a softer female one sings next.
she affirms the divine hollow in each of our centers.
she says the first stage of the self healing has already begun.
Apr 2013 · 680
rosa mistica
c quirino Apr 2013
what happened to our pantheon?
it fell into disrepair during the night.
you ask me where we should worship.

i resign both eyes inward,
in my flesh-home i am free to be confused,
absolved from the tremors of management.

all sides of you are colliding.

pounding comes at the door.
your door. your face.
in through your lips.
breath upon your lashes
so that your eyes will feel
at home in this humid facsimile of your homeland.

what you want most is a demand for submission.
miracles granted once,
never afterward,
its own debatable occurrence is myth to us for years to come.
Apr 2013 · 728
put that back
c quirino Apr 2013
He asks you, “how does a forest sound.”

there’s that veiled, monastic hush to everything,
not so much muffled,
words, (in your language or others,)
that cannot be understood save for their intonation,
vague fingerprints on your pearlescent neck.

you look up and there’s lace,
weaving itself matador armed through impossible eyelets.

straw falls out eventually,
your face hollows,
and eye sockets repurposed as homes for vines,
tendrils pushing upwards,

they breach the surface of the earth and take their first breath.
Apr 2013 · 928
$$$$$$$$$$$$$
c quirino Apr 2013
when the child tugs at my apron strings,
what is my name but satan.
mistress river acid,
strip my legs of their skin with each step,
down to tendon, bone, and marrow.
i’ll wash up, limbless and parched.

we’ll stand, nubile and resplendent
beneath you while you sleep,
lobbing pebbles at your window,
while you’ll believe it to be rain,
commuting furtively into the pile of dead leaves
and crumpled tissues in the drain pipe.

you’ll ask us if we were there,
not believing voices beyond cave shadows.

we’ll lie, aged and eyelid heavy,
in sweet-earth-cupped-hands.

*~life's about to get real weird in the next ten seconds~
c quirino Apr 2013
when a house on the fault line begins to shift, it isn’t really something that can be seen with the naked eye. It only becomes noticeable once the door itself is off its hinge, forced indefinitely into its frame, never to open save for your daily tackles. it becomes playful, and thinks this is how doors must behave.

your house’s bones, the wood frame of your body leans just slightly to the left, throwing off all balance. windows look down instead of forward, eaves appear concerned, a house’s ears hear you mumble softly into night, concerned about trivial things, and how you will honor it.

climb seven deftly and feel as if you were at sea.
c quirino Apr 2013
one learns how to operate legs,
and standard procedures in finger movement.
eventually, the career of inhabiting one’s own body becomes routine,
and not to be described as sublime or miraculous.

futures are foreign and wonderful.
or they’re not,
and your perceptors block all that out,
so you may remain in waking sleep,
trotting down express lanes into life as Mandarins,
officiating in a court so rigid.
c quirino Apr 2013
lady jane uses ashes to blacken her brows.
she does this while yelling,
just yelling,
and ululating into the courtyard below.
bellow.
saul bellow.
and martian heavy medgar evers.
close me in myself.
ready for a road trip.

manipulate your eigengrau,
be more uneasy with each passing millisecond spent in complete solitude with you yourself,
because nothing should scare you more than your mind alone with no hand clasped and anchoring you  to the edge of the pool.

you realize that you wake,
only to create beautiful lucid dreams for yourself and no one else.
Mar 2013 · 1.1k
dirty bird
c quirino Mar 2013
you hand the prince a loaf of white bread.
he rises, and from behind velvet drapes,
the day is strong, and proud,
and her harshest light envelopes the folds of your face,
wrapping itself around every flaw,
letting none sleep undisturbed.

you realize the reason you
want to have a hand in keeping him alive
is in his eyes, and how they’re
color of a lake you fell into once, as a child.
Mar 2013 · 599
untitled - March 19, 2013
c quirino Mar 2013
wander five feet above,
on a shivering branch.
pink, nubile and unprepared.

south is the wind
and face it, as it pours milkmaid dutch
down the weighed, sagging ravines on your cheeks.
rain climbing eyelids,
wave falling on the sea wall.

“a rumor spread about an area where a ******’s blood was painted on an electric line.”

******, lacquer your teeth.
assume mother’s mantle,
live in deliberate anonymity.
Mar 2013 · 494
our sunday friend
c quirino Mar 2013
What you may or may not be aware of,
is that at any one point in time,
from the first right step you convey,
rising from a bed each morning,
is that these forward actions are your entrances
and exits from any number of overlapping narratives.

on another morning,
when both lie on either side,
acquaint yourself with one vein-veiled second of 09:00 sunlight,
and you will be well.
c quirino Mar 2013
you will allow yourself several moments of grace before entering a room.

and we will forget the old ways,
not all at once, but piecemeal.
seconds will escape, one by one at first
and soon they’ll join hands and walk away from our consciousness freely.

when we come to,
we’ll look first at our fallow hands
and then to the ruins of former empires.

so we stumbled quietly into fields and put down seeds.
Mar 2013 · 2.6k
cardinal
c quirino Mar 2013
sounds of the engorged worm’s lumbering steps,
they pierce not so stinging as the golden glow of orbs outside your window.
Quietude will find no home here.
neither will that longed-for sense.

what we want,
the ‘soul sleep,’
rests further,
further still, and away from finger tips,

gently rest me in myself,
to sweetly mine the interiors of subterranean caverns,
within which, we held exiled domain for millennia before we were men.
c quirino Jan 2013
For a few minutes,
I sat and had a full-on conversation
with a voice on the other end of the phone call
that may have been just a recording.

His voice was...perfect.
It lacked any of the audible stretch marks
an organic, troubled human could produce.
It floated, lilting.

His mouth sounded as if it had made its home on a strong, defined jaw.
Within it, two rows of pearlescent stones .

My own lips quivered, anticipating what it would feel like to have this mouth opera bellowing hot air, down, further.
It had finally happened.
I'd fallen in love with a ******* voice that was trying to sell me life insurance.
Jan 2013 · 426
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
c quirino Jan 2013
shortly before your cannon shot onto the surgical table,
the huddled mass of you
caught a glimpse of the eventuality.
‘other’-light razor lip
down the french door hinges of your chest.

when ash from the micro fires sets,
it is that indelible ink that will plague you,
through years of intimate stares at this,
the defining mark of your forehead
when it kissed
something on the other side of divine.
Jan 2013 · 958
lime
c quirino Jan 2013
now it's my turn. I feel no different. No one else remembers that name but me. I don't know how that makes me feel. It's like objectively, the whole thing never happened, that it was another machination of my own will.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

my skull is heavy in my head. It solidified into copper some time during the night, and whenever I walk through my days, my head bobs this way and further, and on the sides of streets, people glance for a few seconds before returning to their own thoughts of hardened skulls within their own sloshing head-cavities.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'shepherd me a sheep, I, near my god, beyond my hopes, beyond my fears, from death into life,' as i remembered it wrong, bone rattle in a brick alley three years this thursday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~

the division between days, illusory, quietly reclines itself between us, so deep and historic that our eyes see it time immemorial, forgetting that it is itself one continuous day, the breadth of it, this our time, that if left unhindered, it would have extended sloping and tumbling in its eaves and want of stars sailing for a morning. you and i were both there, for we were the nascent point from which all the souls fell from.
Dec 2012 · 897
no. 40
c quirino Dec 2012
what lingers wanted is the smell of grass,
and the bell-ringing laughter that cascades
over steps i’d fallen down minutes before.

and what i want most is for you
to tell me what you see when your eyes shut,
the places you are when our eyes shut to you,
the infinite mass and space quietly tucked away,
beneath your brow,
beneath tendon, vein, and tissue,

tell me the colors of indigenous, endangered flora growing in this world of yours
c quirino Nov 2012
I, naked
tremble before you
and deafening is my cry.

you will take me once,
as others have
Memorize my epicanthic folds while
I, fingers-curved,
travel your twin laugh line Ganges.

then the river dries,
several million strands of water,
cut from heavenly head
so that only two or three remain,
angel hair limp and lithe against the clay earth.

funny how you can stretch out famine for years.
c quirino Nov 2012
atmospheric,
and actually quite lovely
or selcouth,
either way, it's time for us to retreat back into ourselves,
to fold delicately into, in two, in three segments,
tucked away until melting ice slides, skin-sheet
off our hairless arms
we yawn before sun gods then,
lids closed, yet light penetrates with branch-veins
so amber and pulsating.
Oct 2012 · 623
received instruction
c quirino Oct 2012
received instruction, piece.

what received instruction fails to teach us
is that it is possible to escape flesh
that if we leaned back,
back more, and gasp-second
as the chair falls off its last leg,
we will fall out of our bodies.

we will be boundless from ourselves,
free to dream-fall, though eyes 2-inch wide

we will re-enter earth under no false pretenses
hatched from wombs
of half a dozen nearly silent she-vessels
on their steady voyages to Middle.

dawn, sweet collection, dawn.
and lift hands to your cool, alabaster face.
the longest should be directed to 3/3.

you’ll scoff. i’ve seen it.
but trust your hands and it will be.

- from a place of yes.  

at some point, you feel your body trying to escape your body,
as if moving upward, a skeleton lighter than the blood-air surrounding it.
it breaches,
separates from its flesh tomb
to be cold, naked, and piercingly stung
before our sun and our god.
c quirino Apr 2012
Maybe my eyes should be two cameras
flashing blinding through nights
divorced from any semblance of logic or reason.

maybe before i should leave earth,
i'll have five minutes to sit
and sift through the images,
choosing 12 or 18 favorites to take with me
into my next life as a blade of grass.

maybe that task is impossible.
i pray that it is.
Feb 2012 · 601
belle dame, No. 2
c quirino Feb 2012
Belle Dame, II

you wonder if you would have looked good
with finger waves in 1922.
it’s pointless to think about,
but it still floats languidly toward you,
one of the frequent gondolas that scratch,
and ****, and drift wandering semite from shore to shore of your skull.

the sun never sets on it, after all.

the other ships,
ancient and moaning,
lean and bow according to waves of a life-heavy sea,
its tides divorced from any semblance of reason,
rhythm  doesn’t lie next to it any longer,
its shape is just an aftertaste now.

your throat is in flames, by the way.
no one took voice this time.
she left of her own accord,
and she’s planned this for weeks,
every gesture, forward motion, and utterance
that would enable her escape from inside you,

this time, it’s pointless scouring the corners of the empire to find her.
you have to remember she’ll come back on her own.
that the harshly lit fluorescent reality will validate her,
or it won’t,
and it’ll reject her like your body is currently doing to the reattached finger you almost lost when you were three.

i need you to pray she makes her boat on time,
and don’t think so much of where she’s going.
Feb 2012 · 819
blue hour pearls
c quirino Feb 2012
do me a favor
and clutch the string of pearls
that gently tightens around your unscraped adam’s apple.
you can’t do it, can you?
don’t worry.

when you come to,
the first thing you’ll think is
“the **** is that smell?”
you realize it’s you,
soaked through boxer briefs,
child-shamed again,

only this time, there is no excuse.
left leg still,
right one twitch,
you wonder when it is you’ll pick yourself up and get over this one.
how many hours and minutes it’ll take,

after all, the “day’s” just starting for you.
you must be the palest native this side of third,
because your personal mantra happens to be
“don’t put my burnt bacon skin out in direct sun.”
you ******* fern.

maybe on another night,
when you clutch the string of pearls,
in shock,
they’ll be there,
maybe they won’t melt so quickly this time.
Jan 2012 · 676
belle dame
c quirino Jan 2012
snow came and took my voice.
possibly, i was sleeping,
birth-curled against the wall
forehead cooled,
bringing the sky
which reflected the ground-glow
to the place within,
it falls softly there, too.

i always love it best untouched,
where it lays, mimicking lines of beasts beneath it.
maybe those are your lines
or mine,
or what if they’re propped up pillows
in the blanket to resemble human form
so we could sneak out past curfew.

we walk in lopsided paths, powdered felt shifting our boots from under us,
maybe my voice is over there in vein-branch trees.
hiding thirty-year-soldier-dedicated.

nature tells us we don’t imbibe of these berries in winter,
for they don’t grow naturally here when foreheads lie, spooning cold walls.
they grow on islands that have never seen this stark leveling,
nurtured by children little older than us
do you know they bid each berry farewell as they pluck them from the vine?
they believe they’ll never in their lives see them again
Dec 2011 · 617
No. 32
c quirino Dec 2011
in another time there was an old man
walking around the woods behind the house.
no one believed me when i said i saw him walk,
quiet, graceful, with divine ease across ground-up leaf.
the color of nutmeg we swallowed just last week
stupid-young-and-pretty
too pretty,
too full of effort.

obvious pencil thick outlines,
**** us for our method.

maybe we were brilliant once
ripe and full
to the brim, even.
so the overflow brushes down our sides,
making you whimper sweetly,
****** again underneath the weight of two,
three,
back to *******
leaves a ring on the table.
should have used a coaster.

should have done a lot of things.
but it is what it is, as you said.

i wonder if you mythologize us as we do you.
look at me.
feel my marfan, thai-dancer fingers under each eye.
what will they look at in two,
three,
back to two years?
I don’t dare tell you this,
but one night when I heard your heart beating
I knew you’d out-live both of us.
and on another night you’ll ask me what happens,
but that’s no where near the right question to ask.

i can tell you a last minute and a half as I recall.
you lie with your hands, flecked with the tiniest boulders
each one a marker of where she laid her own fingers on you.

the thin lace veil flutters violently over each of your orbs,
when the the sound of the wind flowing through them is deafening enough,
it gets up from the seat by your bedside.
“where are you going” your lips are so dry
and we haven’t been here for sixty years to moisten them.
“you are a miserable old **** and you will not have the satisfaction
of being exempt from dying alone.”
Nov 2011 · 552
No. 31
c quirino Nov 2011
it sits somewhere inside a cave,
unseen from street level
deep within it,
parallel to dormant husks of former beasts.
accessible only through divinity’s eye.

climb down,
feet unseen in each step.
but you’ll still feel them there
kicking against earthen layers
they’ll crumble under foot.
don’t worry, though.
it stays in place

rope to take you there,
to here

left fingers violin trembling,
it sounds even better down here, doesn’t it?

slip
bounce organic against the earth walls,
and tumble, foot over brow
over eye,
crash land sweetly
so the breath escapes
extruded through your chest
through your lips

eyes unfocused
though fixed on the pin needle light you climbed through

you wake.
hair in your vision,
like cracks on the windshield,
like vines and branches
when viewed upward,
they’re pressed tightly
to the warm ***** of sky.

they belong there.
maybe you think you do, too.

so get up.
take someone’s hand

and walk
gelatin-leg up the stairs
possibly breathless, into the street.
c quirino Oct 2011
My fingers never touched it,
save for the tv screen.
Mama told me to not touch the screen with my unclean hands.
Sometimes when she wasn’t looking, I did anyway,
and felt crackling beneath my fingertips,
miniature lighting storms,
ravaging the faces of the young, famous, and beautiful.

but i never touched the undesirables,
never laid holy lightning on the exposed war-bones
escaping at 90 degrees from charred, living corpses.

i never held the dying children,
coffee-cup weight in my palms,
colder still,
and forgotten after the end of the episode.

and i still felt nothing
when i should have smelled ash.

i can’t imagine, or i can,
what happens on our interior planets,
during the four seconds before impact.
are they blissfuly going about routines?
are the markets full, only a few dissenters
crying “end is nigh” ?

they won’t even feel it.
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