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loisa fenichell Jan 2014
please stop writing letters to me,
and by that i just mean, please stop
being so nice to me always. when i can’t sleep, also,
when i cry, which is the same thing, really,
i tell myself that it is because the night is
the wrong size. i used to sleep with your
sweatshirt tucked underneath my head as though
it had been your stomach. i don’t do that anymore.
i don’t remember what your stomach tastes like
anymore. i wear my father’s old sweaters and sit
like an electric storm on my bed and cry. i never close
the blinds. i think part of me wants my neighbors
to see that i’m not very strong after all. it’s like
i think that that’s some kind of hot secret. in therapy
i am told that i am strong and smart and part of me
wants to laugh  because if only she knew. when you
come back, you’ll be so happy to see me, you wrote. when
you come back, you’ll be so happy to see me that you’ll start crying,
you wrote. when you come back, maybe you can electrocute me open.
loisa fenichell Jan 2014
I never glow, although sometimes, I shiver. But you knew that. Vermont (1997):
my nose bled tiled floors, I was shelled up in the bathtub, my body fled into ice,
or at least it felt that way. We both watched my flesh melt like some bundle
of broken bees. Your eyes pooled like moths, your mouth held open by keys.
You looked just like our fathers that day, only you were so much less a chain of boys.
Today I stretch over the windowsill and bless the sky for that. Sometimes I wish I went to church.
loisa fenichell Jan 2014
Toothpaste caps line my desk like the speckled tongues of my grandparents.
My cheeks swell every night before I go to bed, like drawers
of babies, like the cheeks of those who spend their lives
with their faces tucked into pipes and gutters and grills.
I am chopping off a bit of the tooth that sticks out of the gum
that lines the far left corner of my mouth and I am giving it to you.
loisa fenichell Jan 2014
She says throw out the dishes she says go to sleep she says
we’re definitely getting older everyday you’re getting older
everyday she says how does my skin look she says where is the moon
she says no she says buy me a water, unlock the door for me,
the bus is here she says I’m ten minutes late twenty fifteen thirty
thirteen the astronaut is here and he’s about to leave without you
goodbye rocket ship she says I’m a rocket ship she says you’ll never
be a rocket ship she says your face is tarnished ruined like
knives left unsharpened like blackberries creamed on the walls remember
the deathwalls

she says look at us

we’re talking in rhythm now.
loisa fenichell Jan 2014
Pebbles and pistachios wrinkle in our pockets
like my mother’s attic wedding dress. From the side your nose
looks like an oil well. The gas station is 2.5 miles
away from here. We’re walking there for bottles that we’ll empty
and then leave next to churches in place of slaughtered lamb.
Sky punctures our wrists. You tell me the weather will be painting itself bruised
fireworks for the next week; I tell you about yawning.
It is summer and I am thinking about your hand overwhelmed
by sweat and how two years ago it was winter and your hand
was still broken but I made you hold my wrists anyway. Last
time we were in the park we drank like muskrats. Corporeal *****
stained the grass like knees: varnish for the ink that grappled
the insides of our tenderly wired bodies.
loisa fenichell Jan 2014
in response to matthew zapruder's "come on all you ghosts," section ii*

I.

I see what you mean about fathers; lately
my father has been the only ghost I know. He
mostly stands in doorways, mostly to say goodnight.

II.

Please tell me more about what it’s like to listen
to your father cough. Mine never has; I wasn’t even born yet
when someone stole his lungs, hid them away in a graveyard.

III.

I think I want a keychain like yours. No not
a keychain, but something just as much a corpse. Mostly
just a portrait of my father, maybe I’ll take your keychain
and onto it I’ll paint the portraits of everybody’s fathers.

IV.

I know I’m being called, but I don’t
feel quite like my father yet. There is
still so much pavement left for me to see,
and one day I want to be able to list all
of the names of places that I’ve lived in.

V.

I’ve lived mostly in wombs. Also
there was the taxi, and then the apartment skewed
with a crib and rats and some gunshots
from down the street. Later there was the house
by the river, and there was upstate, where
they sat in beach chairs in the parking lots
of gas stations and watched the cars drive by.
loisa fenichell Jan 2014
You see, my skin peels cold moths.
No, no it’s not like that, it’s more like
the feeling you get when you miss
the teeth you had before the fever.
No, you don’t know about that? Ok, I was
three years old and suddenly my
teeth were like bees. Never mind I’ll
tell you about the girl down the street. She’s
like me in that we both run even when it is as snowy
as the bottom of someone’s foot. Sometimes when
we run I’ll wave to her but I don’t think she ever
sees me because she never waves back. You’d like her
because she is like wires, also she is
more of a house than I am. She is the kind of person who
you can tell when she is cold. Oh and she doesn’t hug
streetlamps. But hold on let me explain:
it’s just that whenever I am marking myself
down pavement, whenever I am leaving my house,
I look at all of those streetlamps and look
at all of those brilliant lights creaking out of apartment windows
and pray into my knees that they are all
there for the plucking. That is to say I want
to stand on clasped hands and turn them into gods.
That is to say I am trying to be as bold as a mirror.
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