"smushing" poems
My feet are disgusting and horrendous
Crooked toes and calluses tell my stories
the pitter patter of them on the kitchen floor, trying to be quit and not wake up my parents in the mornings when I was little
Always wishing they were bigger so I could get new shoes
Years wearing on my feet, scars from running into sharp corners
And yet they still hold me up
smushing them into my skates, getting calluses every week for eight years
running from one place another and are learning why every type of ground feels like between my toes
From the frozen pavement to the searing sand they have been through the harshest conditions
And yet they will never fail me
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 7:26 AM UTC
A night of drinking and partying
Ended in 2 couches and 3 people.
You playfully pushed me over
Smushing your body close to mine.
I was with someone
but hadn’t been in love with him
for a long time.
Your hardworking arms pulled me in closer
And you kissed my forehead.
I knew that night I had to end my
Already crumbled relationship
I knew that night that I didn’t want to
Go on forever without ever kissing you.
Mar 24, 2010
Mar 24, 2010 at 2:40 PM UTC
Shake the demon lover
in the effulgent post-Chelyabinsk world,
where death breathes you back
into yourself and backwards you walk
through those coupled images, so posed,
charged with feigned desire,
the lighting just right,
the angle meticulous,
smushing foreheads with golden rings
on your fingers.
You had a dog.
You had a crockpot.
A kid was on the way.
Shake the demon lover,
rip yourself from her arts district loft,
where the music is in French and always beautiful,
glide down the rusted rails,
cruise past the headshops, the pawnshops,
say the word Tuesday and wonder if it means anything
other than the third day of the week.
You shared a bed.
You shared a bed.
You shared a bed.
Shake the demon lover
and her words track you,
her text reads,
"Come over, friend."
And she calls you friend,
she shouts you friend,
she pants you friend,
as you end the affair for
the sixth, seventh, eighth
time, one last couch
**** and never speak
to me again.
May 17, 2016
May 17, 2016 at 12:59 PM UTC
there was a tenderness reserved for me in her. like an eager extra setting at a table, still empty, as she yearned for my presence with dinner time inching impossibly closer. it was like she was playing house and she was smushing our two dolls together. she’d smile at me to pass her the salt and add a wink, because she can. building our own little sinkhole world in the middle of her parents’ dining room. i couldn’t hear her mother ask me what i do for a living.
her family would be delightfully curious of the kind of person who could hold their precious girl’s love and attention. i’d tell them who i was in a nutshell, but she giggled at what was purposefully left unsaid.
they knew the her before me, and the her after me was beaming light to land planes. before, they said, maybe she could just power a small town. the spark in her eyes was threatening to jump the slight curb of her waterline and light everything aflame. she would laugh as we tried to put it out and she’d pull me away running like accidental arsonists.
afterwards, hand in hand, we’d sit on her back patio and laugh a belly laugh. nothing was really funny, just life was electric and it made a sound.
Mar 2, 2022
Mar 2, 2022 at 10:29 PM UTC
Fruit ripens on the vine
Sweet
They tasted wet
Smushing on my lips
Like you did, do, always will
The first time I tasted you, I bit
Peeled. Tore. Ripped.
Into your flesh, heart, (soul?)
I was too rough, now I know
...But so wet.
You had to pop, burst,
when your skin slid against my tongue
your eyes on my heart, I was just as vulnerable.
We were both open, damp, nature, natural, raw,
Gushing. The sound was wet
The sound ran like tears, like truths, like
Juice running, running, running….
I remember how it dripped.
How full your softness
yielded to my thumbs which grabbed you,
cradled, worshiped, wanted
to pull words, truths, adoration and
mysteries to my lips.
To consume you. To eat you.
To invite you to become
a part of me.
But the summer ended too quickly
The harvest begins to yield
We watched as vines, now entangled, withered
hibernated, disappeared, napped in the sunset
As full, firm flesh
yielded to silence, darkness, fear
I searched through thorny bramble
to be cut on your thorns
that guard an
innocent heart.
I am hungry. I yearn to know your
sound, sight, texture, explosions
As the nights get cooler,
My summer is leaving.
I pull my blankets closer
each night
wishing they were skins,
caressing skins, hiding bliss
in entangled fingers, glances
and hearts that
I dream of
Sweetness, sticky like honey
comes in summer and lasts
year after year,
bite after bite
strange fruit that
I never thought I'd
find while wandering
misty, drunken twilights
that you've claimed
with nectar that
burns so good into
dark, wooded places.
Lost in misty woods,
you've become what I
crave, desire, long for
cherish
I'll wait to pluck you
from green thickets
the scrapes of thorns,
difficulty finding you,
nurturing exploding fruit
The effort is worth all the work,
With glowing eyes and sweaty palms
Like a child, I am patient
for the first time.
Oh, strange fruit!
I dream of summers
lost in your grove
The mysterious copse
where vines cradle,
thorns please, moons burn
and suns hang above the horizon
drunk from a fruit so
dangerously sweet,
wet and supple with morning's
cool dew.
May 17, 2014
May 17, 2014 at 4:33 AM UTC
To the unlikely Amtrak ride
the one with people
acting like cartoons.
With an announcer
over the intercom
smushing words together--
saying we'll arrive in Lodi
and then in blah blah location.
To the conductor
whom
speaks to us as children,
because to him
we look like long time
traveling companions.
He plays with our
destinations
and notices that we're going
to two different locations.
We've only known
each other existed from
the 30 minutes we rode
side by side on the bus before the train.
No matter the time.
We've become limited-less
as it was too easy to speak
and impossible to stop.
All the truths
we've shared will never be gone
the moment just as we felt in it
can never truly come to an end.
As long as the train keeps moving
our moment will forever trek on.
Even after I have left the ride
and you've finally fallen aleep
without my company to stir you awake.
It may never happen again
just like the dreams you're having
right this moment.
But least we came to speak
for the shortest
of train rides.
Jan 26, 2018
Jan 26, 2018 at 12:18 PM UTC
I got my first kiss over with.
It's done.
It felt weird, we were just smushing our faces together- I didn't get how people did it for fun.
I felt anxious for a good couple days after we kissed- I felt tainted and embarrassed, as if everyone knew how pitiful the situation was.
I barely ate.
I remember when I told them about it, my friends said they were proud of me, which I thought was a really weird reaction to it. Especially since I didn't feel proud, I felt ashamed.
Oct 19, 2018
Oct 19, 2018 at 7:10 PM UTC
It's an aging, raging super nova fireball of fury.
There's a breeding, feeding, big nasty dragon inside of me.
It's flowing, growing, lickety-split on the double.
I'm requesting, professing, that you give it the boot or obtain the trouble.
You're pushing, smushing, carelessly handling the buttons to keep it cool.
I warned you.
You ******* fool.
-Jennifer DeAngelo
Copyrighted 2016
May 27, 2016
May 27, 2016 at 7:05 PM UTC