GARBAGE SPACE SOUL TRASH
by Michelle Awad

This city

doesn’t do earth sounds,

it speaks
in tongues,
otherworldly garbled 
nonsense,
she says

melted sugar,

she says

orange glaze,

don’t listen, there is no

such thing

as listening, open

your mouth, concentrate
on
on the vibrations,
 my
bloodstream feels 
buoyant,
and willing; this

city says she 
was here

before the Ice Age and the

Big Bang. The liquor store

around the corner

sells butterscotch pudding

that’ll knock you dead, and

you’ll say thank you,

but it will sound

like cinnamon.

I was 26

when I moved here,

a little young

for my age, I slept

alone

except for when

I didn’t, I learned

to play the violin

on his heartstrings,

I learned there’s no such 
thing

as good whiskey, but 
you
don’t drink it

for the taste.

This city

doesn’t do earth sounds,

doesn’t do love songs, 

doesn’t do good morning

texts, I tell you—just

a drum beat you hear as

a confession, a sax solo that

needs an RSVP, it’s okay

to be a little less, to be 

a little more

than human, when it’s

healthy, just some good 

old-fashioned

trash soul space garbage,

some crushed velvet in your

veins, just 
goosebumps and

smoke rings, and you’d look

like a lava lamp if they opened

you up, honey. And you only

hear it

if you forget everything you know

about everything, about 
language,
and logic, there’s no 
room for biology
when she says

lemon zest, she says

turmeric, she says 

nape of my neck.



You lick your lips.

ON ALL THE DIFFERENT WAYS TO BE HUNGRY


by Michelle Awad

My front porch

might as well be

Heaven’s Gate, might

as well be a rain forest, 

might as well be

a coliseum, an alter,

a library.

A man

walks by

on the sidewalk,

I make eye contact,

and wave, he asks me,
if I have a few dollars

or some change, he
calls me 
ma’am, and

I say, no, I’m sorry.

The no is a lie.
The sorry is only
a 
half-lie, as sorries
often 
are, he waves and

continues on his way,

I notice his sport coat,

his dark-wash jeans,

he’s a little scruffy of

face, but otherwise 
he
does not look

to be wanting,
but 
what does that mean,

in the grand scheme

of things, I think.

I don’t look

like I cried myself

to sleep.

SOCIAL DISTANCING


by Michelle Awad

I have tried

swallowing

my pride, but my

pride
is jagged of edge

and bitter of taste,

I have

to **** on it

for a while
before 
it’ll go down
properly. Too often,

loving myself is like

taking a dry pill,

there is always

this thing stuck

in my esophagus,

and I think maybe it’s

words, so here I am, and 

I think maybe it’s 
shameful,

so here I am, I

went inside

just now

thinking I’d lay myself

in your lap

without warning, 
but the mood

wasn’t right, I don’t know

how else to explain it,

it feels like

we are low on battery,

we need charging,
it’s a 
blackout, we’re a city,
I 
don’t know how else to

explain it, and how do 
you
begin to repair what
 is
broken in ways
 you
can’t explain? So 
instead

I sat on the opposite end

of the couch, 
I listened to you
relay 
a conversation you were

having
with technology. You

are an excellent translator,

but this isn’t my idea

of communicating. I

decided

to come outside and 
write this,
instead of kissing you,

and that sounds crazy to me,

to do anything

instead of kissing you,

that’s ******* crazy, all we 
ever

talk about

is this ******* quarantine, 

how on earth 
do we feel 

so far apart lately.

ARE YOU THERE ELVIS? IT’S ME, MICHELLE
by Michelle Awad


My grandmother only
cries
in the face of death,
and even then,
it is shrouded in
laughter,
like her body is 
rejecting
the notion.



I have come to 
understand

that this

is hereditary.

Now.

An appointment card 
arrives

in the mail for you,

she breaks down; 
“Blue Christmas” plays

through the car stereo,

she breaks down; 
she doesn’t sleep, she thinks

she can hear you

moaning and coughing

in the next room. Yesterday,

my aunt asked her 
a question,
and she told her

she didn’t know,
to go ask 
you.


I remember your hands, 

as dandelion wishes, and

the smell of 
lawn clippings,
and
a stack of 
word search puzzle booklets

on your side table, but 

I never catch myself

talking about you

in the present tense.

It's something
I deeply wish
was hereditary.

THE WORST PART OF A BREAK-UP
by Michelle Awad



is not the screaming,

not the gut-clenching

holding/un-holding,
fighting

back tears, it’s not the

I can’t do this anymores, or

this isn’t workings, not the

storming out, or the
returning 
house keys, or
the picking up your 
things,
you left them here, 
they’re
in a box on the porch

if you want them back, or I

can give them to Goodwill.

Either way, you have a
week.

The worst part

of a break-up

is

much bigger

much quieter

much later

it’s
that I can’t find

a **** picture

of myself that isn’t

a picture of you,
it’s
deleting them, 
it’s

selling those 
concert tickets,

it’s unremembering,

phone numbers,

and birthdays, and what

you’d find funny, it’s
wanting to tell you,
it's

the ritual,

the cleansing, 
the
things that we 
do,

the things that we 
have
to do,


to pretend
 that
we’re not actually


breaking.3

IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES
by Michelle Awad


I burst

forth,

slimy,

sticky,

slippery, 

red,

I never stopped

being red, actually,

crying,

always crying,

maybe that’s why

I try not to

lately, 
they gave me

to my mother,

and she laughed,

what the hell

am I gonna

do with you, 

my father

was in the room,

or maybe he wasn’t,

probably
he wasn’t,

the second thing

I knew

after the warmth of 
the womb

was the coldness of
space. My father,

the Great Collector, 
of bar stools,
and gasoline

receipts, of

more women’s children

than he knew

what to do with; 


I thank
whatever God

there is

for my mother,

lying there,

slimy,

sticky,

slippery,

red,
because of me,
not unafraid,
but brave,
they gave me 
to her,
and she laughed,

what the hell

am I gonna

do with you,

she said, and she never

got an answer

any more

than he did.

She loved me anyway.

SUBURBAN LEGEND


by Michelle Awad

He said,

he saw Bigfoot once,

and he waved, or she, 

he forgot to ask, but anyway,

Bigfoot waved, and then

went on making footprints

in the forest floor, and he

said, he or she or they

smelled

like the wanton wishes

of every stinking mortal

who walks upright and

has opposable thumbs 

and thinks being hairless 

of body makes them 

anything other than

naked. He said,

he saw a UFO once,

that it wasn’t a plane

or a weather balloon, 
or a
reflection in his wire-
framed
glasses, and you

can’t tell him otherwise, 
he said

there were no stars that

evening, but it went away

as quickly as it came, like

love, as

fast as the morning, that

a vapor trail of hope

and possibility was all

that remained, he said he

saw
his mother’s face
in 
the fading.


He left

before I could tell him

I am no 
anomaly, no world

wonder, no mystery,

I am

the place where 

things happen, I am

the setting,

I am the North American

wilderness, the 
night sky,

the expanse of the 
universe,
endless, the lack of 
oxygen,
the silence so 
deep and vast

and empty it’s the closest 

we’ll ever know to the absolute,

ultimate, big, scary
 


Nothing.



I am Loch Ness.

There’s a monster

inside me

swimming around

that some people 
claim

to have seen.

QUARANTINE DAY 6—
by Michelle Awad



I have scratched all the polish

off my nails. 



I’m biting them again.

You stare at your phone

and show me

the six-hundredth meme,

and I smile

weakly.

I stare at my computer

screen.

For the first time in over

a year, I write poetry
I have no

intention

of you ever seeing.

I imagine 


I feel hungry but cannot be

bothered to eat

the same way

you don’t think about

having *** with me.

Numbly.

Absentmindedly.

Honestly.  

You still ask for a kiss

when you have done

a good job.

I thank you for making

lunch again (kiss) I thank you

for bringing me

my charging cable (kiss) I

thank you

because you love me (kiss) you
love me (kiss) and 
I feel
guilty

that it doesn’t
seem enough 
lately.

Stay inside, they said,

it’s safer, they said.

What a load a ****.

MODERN LIVING
after Eileen Myles

In the spirit 
of wakefulness 

my neighbors 
ride their bikes

after making 
brunch, together,

wiping sleep from

each other’s

eyes, the dogs

bark

from their balcony, 
their
keys jangle 
in the wooden gate

as they leave,

and that is the 
sound

of modern living. 

I sleep too late,

I hate the morning 

as if it broke my

heart once, and 

maybe it did, back

when youth tasted

like homemade

ice-cream and walnuts

straight off the 
tree, and
I didn’t mind
 having arms

wrapped around

me. I spent the 
simplest days

I will ever know

wishing life were more

complicated, I used

to talk to the sun, it 

used to kiss me and

my shoulders

turned red and

that’s how I learned

about pain, about

being betrayed, about

staying inside to be

safe, I used

to tell people 
that’s who

I got my hair from,

like it was family. I
swam 
in the ocean for
the 
first time and 
decided
it was

where the whole

world’s tears went

after they fell from 

its cheeks, I tasted 
the salt
sticking to 
my chin and 

hoped they all 
had
found out how 
to be
happy. I didn’t know

how hard 

being happy



could be.
I can see why people

take beach trips

to get away, to forget

their troubles, more

and more, 
it seems the

only way to feel 
weightless 

is to submerge

yourself in other 
people, have you ever
felt alone

with the tide

at your feet? my 
neighbors

come home, and

their dogs stampede

into their front yard,

just fragments,

disjointed shadows

behind a picket fence,

and my neighbors

return inside

to clean the brunch

plates, to wipe the

sweat from each other’s

eyes, and foreheads,

and maybe he

kisses her neck and

tastes

the sea

for a second, and

he sighs

with relief, and that

is the sound

of modern living.