This is our city. The soft flesh of intent, like earth,
remains on fingers: putrid, under the nails.
When you pause, you write about love. You leave
out the name on the leaf, as the tree blooms
to those hot, unformed breaths.
Swallowing you as all else has been taken
and done away with, as you know, and see
the sardonic swing of something sharp and
endless. It’s in me.
The thought is born; does not perish,
but trembles on its limbs, the crumbling
stones to mid-life empty as a wish.
This is a song for the lovers to die to
This is a songbird, beheaded and plucked
This is a string and a bow and a heartache
This is a scream spelled in elephant tusks
This is a song for the lovers to lie to
This is a whisper, an ocean of trysts
This is a promise, betrayed into tree bark
This is a sigh that remembers a kiss
This is a song for the lovers to laugh at
played upon toes under old family quilts
This is the howling of lust hungered jackals
needing, and feeding, until they are filled
This is a song for the lovers to lie to
tangled, entwined in a soft sea of arms
This is the sweet steady beat of inhaling
This is the lullaby; these are its charms
This is a song for the lovers to die to
Age crackled hands held between rocking chairs
This is the smile when a lover’s returning
and my crescendo heart as she climbs up the stairs
Space
I am debris floating in the blackness
of
space,
following the vapor trail of star-ships,
fueled by the sweat of cosmonauts,
and the collective imaginations,
of
Sci-Fi writers,
laying the ground work for the digital divide,
and the naming of celestial bodies,
in tribute,
to
the arbitrary, intellectual property rights,
of monkeys who flew too close to the sun,
howling as they rubbed the residue,
of stardust on their teeth,
from the last remnants
of
the after-glow of creation.
Their voices augmented
like the expansion of the known universe,
and
then abruptly contracted…
to silence,
like the implosion of unknown galaxies…
and all of this
occurring spontaneously
on the tip
of
my cosmic tongue.
Take me and soak me in cold water overnight
Fine tooth comb my soul after sunrise
Make me a medicine of laughter and alcohol
Benumbed by life
Landlocked
Onshore winds breathing prophecies of an early death
I miss Jacaranda trees blowing sweet purple wind in my face
By morning i will bury my head in loud music
Sing with me under a moonless night
Hold me
Let me hide my face in your chest
And don’t let go when my tears start falling
to the rooftop.
How does one describe the brick
facade of Fifth Avenue at precisely
that hour when a text message—
“omw; 56th is packed, might be
late”—coats the sweet city in egg-
wash to a table full of Swedes
gnoshing on the brilliant clang
of soiled enamel and trajectory
of the nucleic family? Salmon
can be consumed with deep
breaths, treating the womb
of Central Park to a dash of
sterile heartbreak, when we breathe
[collectively] the horse shit
collecting beneath the lashes
of Columbus. Oh heavenly dust
mites! Where were you when
Brooklyn flung her arms
out to bear a young man’s
hour? To carry a young man’s
sorrow? Where were you,
Frank, when fear forgot itself
and peered through fingerprinted
plexiglass at the world, beyond?
i had a message from a pretty asian girl,
she noticed i lived in anonymous proxy like she does
and wants to hang out with me.
is this real love?
will i ever be anything more than an anonymous proxy?
these are real questions,
ones meant for a soap opera,
i hope to be alive one day.
i asked my friend if he thought i had a chance with her,
but he shook his head and told me i’m a fool,
that i am prospecting for pyrite.
but i believe in falling in love via language.
i believe in the hopes of advertisements,
when i meet her i will wear axe body spray
and send all my astronauts to the moon
in hopes they’ll come back as national heroes.
I hate reiteration and I think my grandma’s brain is too busy dancing.
Every day at four pm my grandma asks me the same question:
“Do you like ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’?”
I sit and nod my head with my hand in the popcorn bowl and my eyes on her jowls as she reiterates what the show is about. My head is a robot with automatic responses.
I think she’s becoming forgetful.
I think she’s becoming senile.
I hate when my grandma tries to argue with me over stupid things like what the temperature is outside. Like, excuse me for not being a meteorologist.
She defends the weatherman over the thermometer and she puts dirty pans in the oven to wash later.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Fish, fry, apple pie.
Let’s have a Big Mac instead.
It seems her mind is
Coming
And
Going
She’s always been the same, I think.
Or maybe she’s just not the same when I’m paying attention to detail.
I used to come and go from her house a lot. We’d spend the night here as kids and dance on her bed and eat licorice that my grandpa gave us and watch Disney classics and sing themes from “Annie”-the original, not the remake.
The sun’ll come out
Tomorrow.
Every visit was the same.
Coming
And
Going
But when I live here and I see her every day, it’s all different, I think.
I guess the difference is
Coming
And
Staying
Babies come like fish
Babies come like fish, you say
some with gulls lapping at the foam,
their peninsula beaks protruding
and others their thin heads curving outward.
They are unhinged from the sea
of woolly womb and their wings
rustle under the heavy breeze.
Babies come like fish, you say
some with stalwart grins
and puffy eyes, like a sea tortoise
waddling in the thick, wet sand.
They are shackled to the shore
beside the linden trees
and the scattered trash
in vociferous expectation.
“The thinking game plays on. Halogen skies and digital billboards snooze their big city dreams, punctuated by the occasional minaret. A sidewalk shudders unguents through earthquake cracks, all rhyme and violence. I skim the city’s black tar glyphs. I’m now well-read. Each morning an absolution for the brain, my slow sycophantic goading of it into sticky fissures and origami folds. It’s a form of happiness, surely, too erudite to be understood.”
—Siel Ju’s “Miracle Mile” is our poem of the week“When our breasts arrived as a kind of currency, we’d tug our camisoles low, use our newfangled bodies to haggle with the ice cream man. The winner was the girl who received her chocolate cone for free, who sucked on candy cigarettes the same way she wore a training bra. That summer my pockets grew forests of hand-tied maraschino cherry stems: tampered evidence that I might one day be worthy of kissing. In exchange for rides on the handlebars of their bikes, we’d let the boys bite the beads off our candy necklaces until the chokers resembled punched out teeth. From their slobber, blue and violet stained my throat where the sweetness had once been, so I suppose, Your Honor, I was preparing for him.”
—Megan Falley, “Beginning in an Ice Cream Truck and Ending in a Court Room”i am so tired of sad cliches:
your hands are peeling away
my ribs, splinters
my heart is in a million pieces
my love is a hollow tree
and you are knocking
on my collarbones.
it is pale.
write me something beautiful.
serenade me
with all the rhymes your mother told
so you could remember
but they’ve been forgotten
since your father left
i am a shadow,
you are the sky
/
an open window,
a closed door
everything is amaranthine
and i am drowning
in the red
write me something meaningful.
breathe out yesterday
and tomorrow
we are birds
on open wing
drifting into empty horizons.
the sunset burns.
i am a storm,
you are dirt
/
silver clouds,
heavy shoes
nothing lasts forever
and i am hoping
this isn’t true
write me something beautiful.
i am so tired.
Post
Each ripple in open water, like you,
Acts below the sun.
On the surface you shiver
But I assure you, gunfire has ceased.
Over, are the fires, my dearest, it
Rests at the horizon.
The heavier it gets, the cooler
We’ll be - we have stars coming for us.
Our time is extraordinary.
We are simple, ready for all the
Worth in each other.
You’re safe to be at rest with me.
