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loisa fenichell Aug 2014
I do not love myself
dear poet I could not love myself even if I tried
dear poet I do not love myself dear poet I try to love myself
dear poet I sit in meditation groups & I chant “love your body”
over & over again, silently, cyclically, a prayer
until I am crying dear poet I am not yet 20
& my body already feels wrinkled
dear poet last night I had a panic attack
because last night a boy who reminded me of my mother
tried to kiss me on a field underneath dark stars
dear poet I still feel guilty for not kissing him back
dear poet he tasted like 12 years old again
dear poet like 12 years old I was upstate at camp in a lake
shaped like a womb swimming with my back arched
upside down like Australia dear poet I am all skin & mosquito bites
& I still taste like summer like alcohol from a boy
dear poet I am shaking here in my skin dear poet
I can’t stop shaking dear poet please calm me down dear poet
once I loved a boy & then he drowned himself in a lake
& dear poet I cannot love again dear poet except I love you dear poet
for a prompt (write poem titled "dear poet")
loisa fenichell Aug 2014
1

The boy dies after staying awake all night
reading "The Plague." He drowns himself in a lake. This is summer of '94. 
We all attend the funeral. Nobody talks, except for the priest, as the body is being lowered into wet grounds. The rest of the time it is as silent as the boy's body was in the moments
after drowning.

2

Summer of '94 I am eighteen, lying in bed in between sheets that are as white and as cotton as my mother's wedding dress. The moon's face is as cruel and as yellow as that of a boy's. I dream up my first nightmare: I am a widow and I am being strangled by my corpse of a husband until my skin is dark blue, the color of the lake the boy drowned in. 

3

Summer of '94 is the hottest summer. Billy The Neighbor takes me to behind the yellow house. We are both barefooted, our toes grassy and sticky with sweat. He seems to love me, he tells me he does, before having me lie beneath him on the ground. It is night and I can barely see his face, but I know that it is tinged with glistening pink. I touch his back and it feels like a childhood fever.

4

There are days when Mother thinks
that she is her mother, who died before I was born, or at least pretends to be her:
dresses in her mother's clothes that we keep
in the attic, talks poorly about herself. I have to hold her until she begins 
to whimper and then is herself again. 

5

The last night of summer the dog dies. The vet tells us that it is a natural death. 

6

The last night of summer the moon is as bright as an old ghost and I do not get any sleep. In my head I am the boy drowning himself in the lake.
loisa fenichell Aug 2014
I don’t ever want to sleep with you
in a hotel bed in white sheets
in white sheets with you I feel death
I don’t want to ever feel ghost with you
I spend all summer with you in lakes
water makes me feel
more ghost than anything else does
you hold me in the water & love me
& I keep thinking
is this really what your body looks like when it’s sunny out
(like a mountain range like a museum of moths)
you have a face like a moth
& I have a stomach like a moth
how fitting
my stomach is so large in this water
& in this water I am ghost
& in this water you are holding a funeral & in this water
everybody is holding a funeral
for somebody else
I am not the most important ghost anymore
I am just a simple ghost floating
through gentle mists
like a child
loisa fenichell Aug 2014
The day we broke fast it was late July & your body tasted like heat
& rain, even though it hadn’t rained all month. That July
the grass died, & then our parents died, & then the neighborhood dogs,
& the cows, too, out in the large fields, & there were flies everywhere,
buzzing like the wrinkles of the elderly. You died last, the day we broke fast,
along with every other boy from the neighborhood. Your bodies
were all empty corpses, sprawled out together flat & open & with hanging tongues,
like a high school football field.

The last night of July I had a dream in which you were the devil,
all red skin & hair like a bucket of moon ***** & missing eyes.
I woke up screaming, but very quietly, because it was still early, 6am,
your eyes were missing & so were you. The last night of July I tried
sneaking out of the house & into the small graveyard next to the small church
that rested up the hill by the small school, but your tombstone was missing
& I cried until I didn’t have a throat anymore, until I was just one large body,
very empty, very carved out, like the pool
down the street
that Grandmother used to take me to.
loisa fenichell Aug 2014
The first story I ever heard was from Grandfather,
about a boy & his dog. Grandfather looked pale
as ash that day. It was December & I was still
a small wrinkle in a bassinet. Mother & Father
were still new parents. They never listened to Grandfather,
just cradled me like a bundle of empty beer bottles.

Even now I’ve never seen either of my parents
drink, but I can hear them screaming, at night, about me,
mostly, sounding like whorls of fingerprints
being rubbed together in the wrong direction. My body is so often

being rubbed together in the wrong direction: a stomach that feels like moths
or eggs boiled incorrectly, too soft or too hard. My stomach growls, often.
Tightens, often, like thousands of screwdrivers in my throat.

If Grandfather could see me now he would cry. In the story
the boy & his dog are having trouble moving their sled down
a steep & snowy mountain but in the end they succeed, sliding
down the mountain the way hands do across large bellies. I am not a boy,
I do not own a dog, or a sled. Nights I stay up late
curled on the floor of the kitchen or the bathroom,
clutching at my body,
at the swole of my abdomen,
as though it were a large pile of greasy, brown rats.
loisa fenichell Jul 2014
i.

I’m into you like moons. I’m sorry.
That’s not what you want to hear. I’m
into you like how my shoulders make waves.
There is a river tearing down from my neck.  
I think maybe you think that you are inside
of me like a second burden. No, but see, I
have so many souls all taped to my gutters,
to my insides. I think that’s why I’m always
holding doors open for strangers.

ii.

I went to my father like clay.
He melted my hands and told me
not to worry and told me not to snow.

iii.

I’m always so very strangerly. Especially
with people on subways. We’ve been on a subway
together once. In fifty years we will be on a subway
together again but it will be by accident like when
you bruise your temples on the corner of the bathroom
sink.

iv.

I’m mostly singing a lot mostly
because it makes my throat disappear
mostly because all of the windows are breaking
anyway so what does it matter. Windows breaking
from some storm. The snow is supposed
to last for five days.

v.

Hello, father, I have disobeyed you.
Look I am falling to the ground,
look I can’t get up, how exciting.
loisa fenichell Jul 2014
i've started to pray
to the toilets of public bathrooms again.
on busses & on trains travelers
can watch me turn dizzy, faint, or,
even better, turn ghostly
like a grandfather.

i've been buying travel tickets
to my brothers again.
lately in my dreams they did not die,
they never died.

there was a joint funeral
& my parents hired a soul singer
to perform cover songs of elliott smith
& i stood still as ash, doing my best
to rip open my face & my palms
& my wrists.

that day was the first day in a week
that i did not eat,
that i did not make myself *****.

in dreams my brothers did not die,
but i still wait for their funeral.

my hands are roads again, or wheels,
all marked & nailed & bruised.
if you turn me into a river
then i will share my secrets with you.
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