Tag: love poem

slugs salted on the patio,
cicada shells clinging to the moldering
legs of the picnic bench
I set my birthday cake on when I
was five and still clamoring the plates
together for attention,
(and now?)
dozens of unclaimed Easter eggs
rotting under rusty swing sets,
a mouse writhing on a glue trap
that was just SHOVED
in a garbage bag
and me
just staring at the thing,
just watching it suffocate as I
am mired in self pity and
freshly out of love.


my wings tip towards
the sun and I’m triumphant
in my emptiness,
my patient nihilism I
chew when the void becomes
the only measurable thing
in my life   I don’t
notice the oncoming car.

grasshopper never notices
the magnifying glass
or pesticide gun.
dog with the mange and glaucoma
blithely to cage.
drunk blindly to rage
then car
then grave.
snail to salt,
cricket to web,
temple to gun
and you say
no, what you never notice is
us.

“love” 

0

there you are.

Saturdays and the 1 pm alarm clock
on snooze,
the bare-faced evenings
in throw blankets;
languid, but there is still
a rabid tongue
between fits of sudden inspiration,
moved
from sheets to
cushions to sheets
to type it down,
to shower
once a week
if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth
graze your chin, scalp,
untouched thighs.
open your chapped lips to the sky,
feel the water rush your neck and
trickle down your navel
to soak your unseen toenails.
do not question anything
for those three whole seconds;
it is the closest thing to orgasm
you can manage.

it has been a tough change in seasons:
tights and boots and an expansive
blankness that still drives your body around
after work to get soy milk,
make polenta for lunch,
take out the compost,
take out the trash,
finish something you once started
when it was
skirts and cherry blossoms,
some organic laughter and a patient optimism
that seems unvisited but should be
worked out by now.
sometimes it is actually raining.
it is harder than that too:
cold and cramps and no tissues
or pads and an anniversary coming
that stings
and does not let go.
and you do hear from them
but with expectations.
you have wrapped yourself tightly
in some binding perseverations
so you constrict yourself,
restrict your errands, and bleed openly
on the carpet.
and sure, there is hunger,
but it’s quick and
you succeed in a relatively
docile surrender.
so what is there outside?
sometimes it is a blizzard.

then it’s flowers and unexpected showers
but it is day longer, sun higher,
you are not mired in the date of departure
anymore, and you forgive the monsoons.
your sensualizing emotions present themselves:
the gloss and black tips,
hips in sheer nylon,
a gentle sway.
sometimes it is unseasonably warm
and you have to hold your cardigan in your hand\
but you have managed a smile
and some sense of buoyancy
and dragged someone along
with the sleeves of
your unworn sweater.
you get lucky:
they want to take the
long way and you have a tendency to
suddenly rush things.

you are both broken
doe and the trap laid
for their arrival.

“ambush” or “8th house”

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you’ve tired of her.

her proletarianism without true
protest           feigned theses and
 shallow interests, a light
encroaching hum that spins into
white noise in the background while
you begin to obsess over another actress.
she can taste your indifference
in the space left of the mattress.
and anyway, you’ve been watching
tigers move.

you’ve been memorizing motion.
you’ve been stating needs and retreating
and she’s been stepping closer.
where’s the knife inside of you?
I say and
I’ve been eavesdropping.
I’ve been spinning webs.

you’ve been seeking the hunt in cats
and I’ve been catching mice
as traps
to rip it from your
nervous breath.

10.

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all day long I do mathematical equations
       they say I’m calculating.
in my head.
as I walk to the laundromat
shifting the hamper beneath me,
I think,
 that’s an understatement.

I think.

I think.
I think.
I love probability
like
what’s the likelihood I’ll see you again
believing I both convinced myself in this reality
and believe I convinced you it was true
so imbued in my delusion
but then God came to my defense
and I knew that as I watched
some things begin to sprout?
or the analysis like
how much money will I  make
if I do this appt and at what cost
to me?
and statistically speaking,
we have to look at patterns,
not just equations but
trends so then here comes
the past.

I turn the headphones up.

you gave me a bouquet of
weeds as I was drinking
my third cup of coffee.
you had picked them from
our backyard when I wasn’t
looking.
you were smiling with teeth;
big, and I thought I loved
 you.

I had gone upstairs to
change into a sundress
and tore something near my spine,
suddenly, like a rip inside.
I mustered up enough breath
to walk down the stairs,
back to you,
where you had been standing with the weeds,
where you had been telling jokes,
where you had been laughing and I said:
 it feels like I pinched a nerve
and am having trouble breathing.
what should I do?

you had to be somewhere
soon, I knew.
you looked up the staircase
 on your way out
the front door and tossed a
I don’t believe you
over the living room floor.
someone else drove me to
the doctor and that doctor
confirmed it,
 prescribed me Flexeril
 for the pain and wrote me
a note explaining to my internship
why I wouldn’t be in that day.
I laid in bed, waiting for the
drugs to subside.

you came home
and attempted to justify
why you always felt
deceived by me.
I lay numb,
relieved of feeling anything as you recited
everything I’d ever done
that bothered you.
you weren’t sorry,
it’s Thursday and I feel
nothing for you
now.

I drop a pair of panties
on the sidewalk
on the way out and
someone calls me from
the corner.
I turn my headphones up

I feel nothing for you now
but history repeats itself.

“Thursday”

0

every day at three pm
the chime rings and
most of us ignore it.
we are sitting in front
of it; he in his wheelchair
and me standing, nervous,
moving  from side to side
with clench palm, straw inside,
unable to commit to the chair
I placed at the entrance of
the cage.

the birds in the aviary
smell their own shit all day and
think the bell is a taunting God
clanging from a distance to keep time
of their blinkered sentence.
they have flown less than one mile,
tired out on plastic branches
picking each other’s imagined nits;
stick legs and beady eyes that,
if bigger,
would reflect a melancholy
I always thought that myself,
or the willows wore best
                  but they have a rival.

I consider lighting the whole thing on fire
so they can rise to the clouds with the smoke;
use their wings for something other than
 beating back water
during forced bath time when
that satanic effigy
in a hazmat suit approaches and
I’d give them tiny tools:
tiny lighters, tiny bullets, gatling guns
and the wherewithal to fire them.
ice picks for the stabs and
the insults to go deeper.
I’d help haunt him.
but they are small, untrained,
and they’d just eat the things.
smell the irony
when the cage fills up with
bloody stool and the devil
in white comes back to wash
them out.

my apologies are inaudible.
outside looking in,
gawking, checking my phone
for the time, an old love letter,
avoiding my clients’ increasing mucus
 in his cough,
his impending question.
(no missed calls)
             do you think Sarah?
          in his Polish accent,
            sleeve half covering his mouth to hide the yellow
                             discharge.
.               I have a tissue in my pocket, wilting.
            unprepared to think of anyone but myself
                at this time in my process.
             (check the time)

             but they don’t get words,
fertilized; little beaks poking through
 spotted eggs and
above all else,
birds with clipped wings
 avoid the despondency
that liberty brings.
that bell rings
and I want them to know
               that the birds think that bell is a God?
                  muted sniffle.
                 I move past the withering Kleenex,
                      his equally decaying stare,
                         to check the time again
                      (no new voicemails)

that bell rings and
I want them to know
just how badly freedom hurts.

“the aviary”

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when I was a kid
my dad played this game:
he would ball his fists and
stick his arms in front
of us

start turning them over;
one over the other in a circular
motion like a machine; the way
gears turn round
and round and he would repeat
the phrase
perpetual motion.
we would start to laugh;
those secret games
only family gets.
he would say go ahead, Sarah,
you can’t stop it;
it’s perpetual motion,
go ahead, go ahead
in his thick New Jersey accent;
Wild Irish Rose on his breath,
and a pack of Merits nearby
one burning in the ashtray.
my brother pinching or
poking me to distract me.

I was so small.
I would reach for his arms but
he used his might and
kept turning them like
he was churning something.
the dog was usually howling
and I would be overcome by a fit
of giggling listening to Matt’s
sarcastic comments, watch the smoke
drift from the table and my
mom somewhere near smiling
and he was right:
I couldn’t stop it.
I was too young
and weak.
he would just roll his arms,
his hands clenched and say
perpetual motion
perpetual motion
sarah sarah it’s perpetual
motion.
I would scream and
jump on top of his forearms
to prove him wrong
but everyone agreed that was cheating.

it was the emptiness
I couldn’t take;
the space from the post to
my side and the absence of
words between that.
and also the unbridled
mood swings.
the way no one saw me
or heard me or checked
in.
I would spend hours
pacing the small corridor, the
tiny living room and saying things
out loud to myself:
I can make it
it’s fine
I can make it here
or I would turn it up
as loud as it would go and
vacillate between the pacing and
jumping up and down, twisting
a necklace or straw
in my hand
and I would picture only one thing:
breakfast or dinner
with a man   it wasn’t
the man, it was the nourishment
I craved, the nutrition
I lacked and the double security
of food and laughter.
it always took place over a meal.
I reached for it every time I felt
anxious, every time I had a
major transition–the savior returned;
the reverie of an unconditional
ear, someone placing their hand on
the small of my back,
handing me water,
congratulating me on completing
a piece and asking me
the question.
.
I rarely pictured the warmth
in sex   that wasn’t what
I lacked.   it was the question I wanted.
he always held space for
the long version.
taking a bite with my fork,
it was cooked or take out
or restaurant, it didn’t matter.
it was warm and filling
and good.
he would say
tell me again
and I would begin the story
where it began:
January 5, 2014,


I arrived in
Kensington to awake
from the middle of a
perpetual daydream.
no, the thing
about your brother
“Sarah,” she gently said,
getting my attention again.
I look up from the top of
my thermos to see my therapist.

“You were going to tell me more
about your brother,”
she repeated.


it’s Thursday, I’m between worlds
again and we are finally
opening it.

“synchronicity”

0

 

my heart was a brass bell:
frozen,
staid,
caught between two
hungers, and I’m asking
you if anyone ever told you
there is no time.

you demand cogency,
a nightlight,
me at your bedside blowing
ardent lullabies.
here I come in linear order.
in the end my gown will be
doused in the close shouts of
someone you love;
I will be draped in
the slow and constant drip
of her;
the residue of
skinned bones rouging
my cheeks with their sudden
red cries that blossom into
spells I tie into crown,
rest on my head
like a prize
as I am laid against
my slain and coffined
in confession before I
rise but you should know
so I’m writing it.

I would pluck at my
backbone to charm her
into weave, into
conjure   her discordant euphony
that produced a mild shock
of light to remind me
I contain some very black
nights but a
torch lodged deep in
coccyx, and a dream;
sketch on marker web,
write the titles
in my thrumming patient way,
my hum,
my black belt bullet tongue
of song rising with summer,
and a damn stitched in
spine ready to synthesize
in crescendo
downward like a flash
flood and

 

you should know the truth
as it happens and the
past as it really
was and me, risen
 growing full of hell
with each new moon,
full of part
with each new
sun.
you should know
what I mean
when I say
       my hands contain a deluge.

“the flood”

0

 

I’m done spitting on your face
 and on my way
 to pick up a bag of cutlery and dishes
 for our house from the front porch
of a stranger’s
when I stop to admire the cracks
in the side of the building.
the wall is coral, faded but still
garish, stands out.
 it’s brick and

this building has no doors and
one broken window.
these defects in the painted halls
lining my new city catch my
eye each time I run an errand
 and I pay my respects in
photographs      stopping at each one,
trying to remember how the boulders
 haunted too      how the ocean felt
on my wasted ankles at gloaming when I guzzled
vodka Big Gulps and watched the
ghost crabs roam the bay.
watched myself dissolve into
the bits of me and can I remember
how the sunset looked draped over both
 tide and flatirons,
hold two things at once
without favor?
how it feels to lose several
small countries you claimed.
all I see are metaphors
and I’m intruded.

these overcoats that rot
without dismay hold space;
 there is natural beauty
 here but it shines brightest
 in demise.
 these bricks are painted to distract from
it’s true inability
 to keep a home  safe like
the way men have held me;
hugged with their claws,
I cracked at the touch     put my rosy shades on
 I only see them
 in their handsome sway.
I snap a picture of the edge of the broken
glass pane and the beginning of
the paint peeling into
white–the fissure.
I trace my finger
over a chip and watch
it flake.

how they left me.

“doors #1”

“doors #1”

0

it’s Friday and we are
 processing hard truths
before we seek the auspiciousness
of everything; before we rest,
pay altar on Sunday
like
:
sometimes some things
just aren’t meant for you.
it’s true, the blur,
 life is rushing and swamps
with it’s shades of
blue; azure
(you name things)
sky, or cobalt fluid
or nightmare
like a wall of nail polish
you’re reading every
dressed up inch of you,
every feeling to decide
what to bathe your magic
tips in tonight.

with or without your
undivided presence,
your inquisitive fantasy,
the moon moves.
time heals all those
unsewn wounds and you embrace
things now with reticence,
but you’re open to the aphorism,
to the temperance,
to the tombstone epitaph
you made him carve across
your eyelids that night
on Jupiter:

I remember everything.

everything you grow to love,
 you lose.

“xxx”

0

you’re shrouded
in caricature of self
under pressure:
embosked in

 crouching vines,
 twigs and berries, my clothing
 and your permanent frost that
molds you into something
statuesque–a snowman frozen
in my front
yard but I’m suddenly feeling
myself so sun,
so warm,
arms wide open,

cherry lipstick,
leper with no island and a
strong want for community.
need to touch your fingers with
my tongue,
audacity,
some ire,
some unresolved bleak black,
and I’m mad at God for every season
that brings the buried back.
I’m not over it,
I’m batshit and
I’m terribly bereft.
I’m hot
they say.

you’re melting a
little and I keep talking about
myself to fill the space.
I used to be
 a vacant room
 but now I’m full of
places,
suspect,
other people’s things,
vindictive trust and other people’s prayers;
the hurt of how they wear me once,
or at night or in their head
and then hang me like
an amulet above their door
to gawk at, clap at,
ask for favor like I’m God’s
only walking angel and really
i’m full of enmity and
you and I are both full of
me.      pinch your carrot nose
and wait for the high noon
rays to hit your coal smile
so you become the puddle
at my feet the thirsty
dog I leashed laps
quietly and you asked me.
what do I long for?

the cloying puffs of air
near my ear saying
come here and
the weather changing.
i’m adding a hat to your costume when
a man taps me on the shoulder.
he wants to ask what’s become of the
others that came before you
and I want to get to the
bottom of it.

“the sun”

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