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Hope Peck Jan 2021
back where we kissed the first time
a gyro and a lemonade in hand
and a whiskey on my mind

i saw you in a dream last week
the smell of expensive cigarettes
bathed in **** boring in my mind

you were formative to say the least
moulding me to meet your every need

my seventeen-year-old frame
between you and a minivan
thrilled to find myself so kissable
consumed by the thrill of it all
missing the thing that everyone saw
Hope Peck Dec 2020
poems make me want to
strangle you with my
bony stupid hands.
i confided in the god of
your heart and she said
you find meaning in
pain, that you're
sick when you're well,
you'll never love me when i'm
good.
Hope Peck Dec 2020
i think i forgot
what hunger is,
that's not a metaphor.
i've begun to attribute
the wailing in my stomach
to mystery,
to some
unknowable fear.

i used to live atop
nothing,
called myself well.
it was holy,
my sacred duty
to ignore desire.

my body, a cavernous hole,
a self-swallowing maw,
i can grow emptiness that
folds over on itself,
kneads itself heavy-handedly.
i can grow emptiness
that feeds itself,
a self-sustaining culture.
Hope Peck Nov 2020
i keep putting these tiny little pills in my body,
the doctors say it will build a wall between me and worry.
with a little vaporized courage, the days grow shorter,
and my thoughts grow long and languid.

i reach into myself with eager hands;
a child trying to grasp onto every tiny treasure
with reckless, manic joy.

i miss those sticky sweaty lethargic nights,
when we would drink wine in the yard,
and both scheme quietly of how to touch,
sit just right,
justify a kiss on the neck,
forgetting that silence is a deadly giveaway.

my eyes bore into you, frustrated
knowing i had not stopped and could not stop
myself from loving you, not from a thousand miles away
and not with your face in my hands.

we are cold,
we bike together in silence and winter makes us short
and dry
and unsweet,
and i try to remember your face from a few days ago,
and i can’t.

when the sun warms us up again,
warm up to me.
love me like the pounding in my stomach that tells me
in your absence,
that tells me i want to live
forever and ever and ever.
Hope Peck Nov 2020
i wish i could keep my head
down, i wish i could keep my
nose where it belongs.

i am spectacularly good
at hurting my own feelings.

the sun shines cold
on my hot head,
i should be storing
fat for winter, hibernating
in some warm quiet cave, i am
instead marching along
on my unmerry way.

the clock falls back, my
hours lost
i sink into
the old ache in my gut telling
me, love is lost. love is
for the birds, and they've
flown further south.

you fool, you
honestly expected
honesty? the only honest thing
is snot freezing in your
cupid's bow, again
reminding you, your
entrails are
always right, your body
holds tension to render
you impenetrable, but no hurt
hurts worst.
Hope Peck Oct 2020
i start to say i love you and it catches in my throat, thank god. i used to say it so readily, compulsively like i was hammering on a thumbtack with a sledgehammer. now i want to say it low and slow, the same way our affection has simmered over hot coals, never quite boiling over, just the right amount of sap in our voices when we say goodbye. i wonder how much of it i’ve dreamed in these drunken winter months when i laid up in bed until i was stupid and drowned my loneliness until you called. remember when we woke up in the sun and you said you liked the the texture of my voice? the way i say things? they say we spend one third of our lifetimes sleeping and i think i’ve spent the same amount of time thinking about kissing your shoulder in the shower. just that one moment on repeat while i ride the train and walk to work, and stare out the window, and paint in the studio, and take a shower, and smoke a cigarette out the window, and, admittedly, probably the entire time we talk on the phone and you tell me about your day and tell me terrible jokes, and i can tell you have your face buried in a pillow.
Hope Peck Oct 2020
inky tendrils staining
lemon yellow and candy pink raleigh sky
smelling of sulfur
and drive-thru chicken

spectators stand on the side of the freeway
masked and silent
watching the glowing orb burn
beneath the overpass,
among the tangles of kudzu
while something blares in the distance

i drive by slow,
and quiet
and long to find this
in the evening news.
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