I want you to put me on your tongue and let me dissolve into you like the tiny white squares that turn those glossy hazel marbles into black holes and intense stares. I want you to kiss me and see negative colored rulers in the corner of your vision and I want you to have trouble making a decision between kissing me and observing me while I'm sitting on your chest and I want you to laugh like you did with your cherry colored lip curled over your childish grin over and over and over again and I want you to forget the conversation topic every time you close your eyes because the world inside of your mind is filled with blinking images that you can't quite explain aloud so you settle for little talks about Rosa Parks and Indian style kisses and how the ocean is the Earth's thing or the complexity of butterfly brains and whether or not they remember their caterpillar memories (they do). Describe to me the first time you saw your favorite color and what developed the affinity for it: yours, a glacier blue toy that resembled the ocean and mine, a lavender Easter dress that twirled when I spun. Tell me about your school crushes when you were four and what you got your clothespin moved to the sad face for and I'll write it all in ink on my knee caps because "God, we're such writers" and you'll check the clock in the gaps and search for tunes or lighters and I'll want time to slow down because the nights spent with you usually seem as though minutes are just a few seconds shy of sixty, which turns the little hand pretty quickly.
I want hours, weeks, decades, to analyze the freckles on your face or the pace at which you move your tongue and precisely how it tastes.
I want you to tell me that your brother would like me and about the mountains in Tennessee and maybe next time I'll try to stay awake, unless you want to listen to the way I breathe so fully when I dream.

When I close my eyes, I want to be able to see what you see.
I want you to keep burying the numb parts of you into the warm parts of me.

Hairline cracks are breaking through
the slough I'm about to shed.
Dry and dysfunctional
as the neuron sac in my skull.

I'll change my hat and change my ammo
honeysuckle artillery polished,
waiting in my drawer.

Sliding an empty coffee mug
back and forth along a counter
like a puck preparing for a slapshot.

Paper matches in colourful books
pressed between the pages
found leaves for child arsonists.

Takeout boxes filled with poems
are sold as artefacts
Don't be silly, poetry comes in plastic bags,
not styrofoam.
To keep ideas hot, wrap them in tinfoil.
But don't forget to leave a hole at the top for steam
or your fresh concepts will get soggy.

Equipped with tennis *****,
spandex suits picket office blocks
standing on chairs and voicing nearly racist remarks
making health and safety inspectors nervous.

Out of control students
launch dictionaries out of third story windows,
donning 21st century masks.

I left my patience beside my keys, on the kitchen table.
Waiting in line for obsolete phone booths
as movie stars soundlessly mouth slang into a receiver.

Nearly responsible
nearly nine
nearly time for bed

I resolve again
that I’ll resolve more
but this time write it down.
Folding kamikaze paper planes
to hide behind park benches, fly into trees.
Let the sun fade the pencil crayon.
I can't run from this blasé gangrene that’s taken my toes.

Andi Balise combined a half page of a short story, “Thanks Going Without Saying” by Liz Balise, with half a page of an essay by Klee, “On Modern Art”, from a book called Modern Artists on Art, 10 Unabridged Essays, edited by Robert L. Herbert. With some small edits and line-breaks comes this miracle of a poem:

Painting a Function Different

I peek out over the railing of reality’s magic
Beyond the porch-floor
Minerva hangs her wash
making the invisible visible
Eighty two and three quarters deaf
she doesn’t notice  
But this is, in fact, reality
Has always been this way—
Bent and bird-like existence  
Balanced on two twigs—always busy—

Her task, is the ******* of space  
Cutting coupons, crushing aluminum cans, ironing
The three phenomena which I must....

Things no one notices—
climbing on the abstract surface of a picture
Switching the curtains  
God! I wish from the infinity of space..she wouldn’t…!

It figures that—
Rusty, her cat, is weaving in fortune or misfortune  
I try to fix them—
Her ankles now
And she curses at accidental quality
from the corner of her mouth
which has only one form
Clothespin or cigarette?  
Long johns and animals and men in heaven
and bureau scarf and sheets—all, non-infinite deities
surround us translucent, contained
  
I decide what to get for her birthday—

We are good friends
through painting a function different

For me?
Predestined necessity.

Minerva?
forgets her manners
and eats like a survivor—

Thanks going without saying.

Eyes. Heartbreak is her sunlit memory barely held by a wooden clothespin. It hangs and glares before your eyes, mocking as it fades into an empty filmstrip. Heartbreak is a lost soul left to perish in her ghost-town, and warmer sunsets are lifetimes away. A wonderwall left standing, pinned polaroids, desperate scratches. You had fought hard and long, for this, but homes are made for breaking and crumbling and leaving, especially in the losing side.

Mouth. Heartbreak is a paper-tag of a goodbye caught in her lips. It is a metaphor that melts at the soft space under your tongue, a certain bittersweet taste made for drowning with a cold lager, a stranger’s whispers, and the perils of his unfiltered cigarette kiss. Heartbreak is taming a manic scream into a delicate, defeated sigh, out of sync with the way she breathed. But then sighing still hurts, and breathing still hurts because you’re alive – you’re so ******* alive for this unbuffered pain.

Chest. Heartbreak is begging your chest not to break amid a listzomaniac rush. Heartbreak is a prosaic throbbing, a treacherous ***** stuck in your ribs, begging to be held like it doesn’t hurt. Heartbreak is a site of buried lavender lithiums, asking for a eulogy; but silence is equally as oppressive. It is your body betraying you, like a city undone by its smokes. It is a quiet word – not a poem, because poems are beautiful despite the pain, and this isn’t. This isn’t.

Hands. Heartbreak is your shaky hand flipping through the last three pages of a tragedy — a heroine dies, a stray star falls, a maiden leaves on a horse-drawn carriage. There is no changing of the ending. Heartbreak is reaching for the empty space in bed, leaving your fingers in technicolored bruises. How can emptiness break one’s bones? Heartbreak is scrubbing your skin dry, raw, and untouchable where she once laid her kisses. Heartbreak is your nails digging through her letters in utter despair — for invisible ink, a promise in the postscript, an estranged lover in familiar flesh, only to find torn sheets, spilled wine, and finality.

Legs. Heartbreak is coming home to ***** laundry all over these cold, wistful floors. Heartbreak is walking in hushed tiptoes only to trip and fall down a memory lane – a kaleidoscope of all the wounds that can possibly hurt. It is catching an empty train to somewhere unloving her is possible – doable. Heartbreak is teaching your legs to run away from the chaos of her naked skin, and not to fall at her feet. But still, you fall and you fall and you break what’s left of your bones chasing after something that’s already gone – long before it has said goodbye. So turn your back and hold your heart — it breaks harder, louder, and worse before it settles down and sits as quiet aching: a forgotten filmstrip, a soundless breath, a calm poem, a serene night.

I write too many poems about my body.

but it’s the only house my spirit knows

and the only movement is my own

I could write you a love poem

or one about the way the kids in my hometown

used to walk the traintracks like they led somewhere

but i’m completely obsessed with this idea of entrapment

that i could be more than skin and bones that i could be made of

ink blotch shoulderblades

ribbon ribcages

clothespin wrists

and ruby lips

that i could abandon myself and get out of this cage

that’s too big or too small or whatever the **** they tell me this week.

the cab drivers always look hopeful
and the bicyclists always seem scared
but it feels like my ribcage birdhouse could stay

it’s my version of home that lives in my chest
past the honor of winters plaid sleeves and silver glasses
it’s room for just me and my clothespin wrists fold up to fit inside
and my braids tickle my nose while i’m there

i can get anywhere from there
and it’s exactly where i always return

there’s a dinosaur on the corner of my favorite place
and all his friends remind me to stay happy
as they stand by and good bye the places i need to go


and i walk up the thousand and six stairs to the top
more alone than i wanted to be
and i am quiet
and i listened but that was the day that the city shut up

and i’m always looking for motorcycles out of the corner of my eye because you pause conversation to watch them fly by
and i know for a moment there your head gets lost

just exactly where you like it


or at least i think you like it

simple enough
If I wanted to, I could
I could dissect every word
you ever said
Take off the fabric that surrounds--
I would never, I told you,

I want to taste your skin,
after it's been hung on the clothespin
in the sun too long
If you heard this, you'd take it the wrong way

you want to taste me
because that little kiss,
you knew what you were doing
and now your hands know every inch of me

so ******* now

My neighbor and I still hang out our wash,
(I, each Thursday, taking my chances.
She, according to weather forecasts, I think,
or maybe by what she feels in her bones).
We laugh at StarTribune's report of some suburban bans
against clotheslines.
We wonder out loud whose tomatoes will first turn red,
and whether cucumbers will make it at all;
this year, it's been too cool and dry
for normal progress to the fall.

Tenacious dandelions, spread as stars across green-earth skies,
drive in spike-like roots, take hold of earth, and won't let go.
Kids squeeze bunches of stems in tight fists
that will open only to release the buttery bouquet to Mom
who hurries to put them in water, in a crystal vase,
wondering how soon she might mourn both flower and child.

While hanging bright, white unmentionables (some somewhat tattered)
on our clothesline, I, unembarrassed, remember my mother:
   with one clothespin held in her mouth
   and half a dozen more in her apron pocket,
   (thus needing not to walk over and over again
   the east-west path to the back door  
   where full supply of pins hangs on the ****)
   she does her woman's task with flair,
   spacing each garment so as not to block the sun or air.

You'd think she'd held some tool to calculate
where the sheet would best allow the breeze to circulate
or where to place each pillow case and sock,
so each would recognize and meet their mates!
And I know she theorized regarding how to hang those socks,
always with the toe pointed upward, so as not to show,
when dried and worn, a crease or ever-so-slight evidence
of the pin's pressure displayed for all to see
on the exposed ankle,
as if that might be a matter
worthy of shame.

dear friend,

I sit criss-crossed on my bed, trying to
think of a way to start this poem my
mouth fidgets like some nervous kid's
fingertips right before a test. Or like a
coke addict inside an elevator. I don't
know how to say it. But
I hope we're friends long enough I'm
the first person you call when you get
a boyfriend. When you're waiting for
the bus, or as you're walking down the
construction jammed block, I hope you
want to tell me first.
I hope we're friends long enough I can
watch you evolve. Cutting your clean cut
corners and bending every straight edge
in your book because you love him, I hope
I see you lose your mind and find it in him.
Irrational or emotional, up or down I hope
I'll be there. In the corner of your peach
room, scared as hell.
I hope we're friends long enough I can
watch your music change. Your hair, the
way you do your make up.
I hope we're friends long enough to see
more presidents be elected,
I hope we're friends long enough we share
more Christmases, more birthdays, more
first days of school. Like a timeline of
pictures hanging from a clothespin, I hope
our memories extend around the equator.
I hope we're friends long enough I'm there
when you're dog dies, or when there's
another hurricane or tornado. Play card
games through the phone remind ourselves
all we have is trust.

and if not,
if time, or distance, or other people or even
just ourselves get in the way. Stretches us
out like an orange rubber band rusting to
snap. If we can't survive the grip of fate.

I hope through all your boyfriends, all the
hair cuts, all the make up experiments, all
the hard times and especially the best
times, if I couldn't be there
I just hope someone is.

flapping on a line
                faded like a hazy sky
        once bright as bluebirds
How I miss your threads
        pale pink
                once scarlet as a rose

Belly to belly
        sheets are packaged
                in pairs
We could frolic
        in puffs
                of air

My clothespin
        to your rope
Come clean
        sweet cotton
                for romance
Laundry
        let’s dance

Yesterday I wrote a note
On a tiny piece of white paper
It read this: ‘I love you’
Then I went outside
And pinned it with a clothespin
On the clothesline
© SilentCry