"purpleyellow" poems
For almost two years we’ve been sitting on a conveyor belt
Heading straight for the potato peeler, which will
Slice right through our thickened skins and puncture our vitals;
A cold cruel machine designed to sit
In industrial kitchens
Waiting for Sodexo’s next batch.
But we—
We’re from the farmer’s market and we are not
Four inches in diameter and six inches in length.
We are clunky. We are knobbled. We are
Purpleyellow and we are waterysweet.
We are not
Iowabland or a poem of rhyming couplets, yeah
We are free verse and we
Had *** because we’re friends.
Or maybe because
We love each other
In one way or another.
Or maybe because we’re lost
Or maybe all of the above, yeah—I don’t know, I just know
The potato peeler won’t accept us for a second.
That mechanical grip, slicing slicing slicing,
A fumbling tumbling in countless browntowhite progression,
It won't accept
Our color, our flavor, our beautiful swirling eyes,
And for a while I didn't either.
But whether we have two more months on the belt or twenty years,
I know that our knobbled progression to nowhere
Will have been one of everywhere.
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 8:30 PM UTC
we talked about escape like it could free us from the darkness in our veins
and you spoke of drowning in a way so beautiful I ached to be the ocean
I didn't mention the red lines on your wrists
you pretended to ignore the purpleyellow bruises on mine
we reached for each other in the dark
the shining of blood the only light we could find
Sep 7, 2014
Sep 7, 2014 at 5:54 PM UTC