London 2012

There's nothing to do in this fucking city
except go to bars where my friends play music,

All of the televisions in all of the bars make me think of you.

I always imagine that you're shaving your beard

with your straight razor and brush And soon
you'll be critically eyeing yourself in your mirror 

one eyebrow raised, head turning left and right
as you comb your hair away from your face.

But that's why I like television, 

because it makes me think of you,

I know that whatever I'm watching is playing on a set somewhere near you

Even if you are not watching it

maybe your next door neighbor is

and they are close to you. 

Inspired, I pull my eyes away from the bar television and

I look for a picture to appear among the staged musicians 

I think about the pictures you will take this winter, when you will have snow

I imagine they will be stark but beautiful, impressive

blue and white with skeletal trees

You will know snow this winter and I will not

I bet experiencing a regular, annual snowfall 

is something that can really change a person. 

I yearn the most for things I can imagine but never possibly know

like a youth spent in Ohio or how good the music was at my parent's wedding.

To The Pretty Poets of the Windy City

— for Rachel

There is a certain emotion that feels like being on the verge of tears.

It is when you sense that you are beginning to better understand someone you’ve loved for a long time, without their knowledge or help.
This feeling is something scary that inspires me: something frightening and loud.
It is a feeling that cannot be cured by listening to punk rock and no folk music for six months. It is a feeling that demands to be explored.

This poem is about three things: traveling clichés, personal stuff, and how Rex and I got married. 

August 4th, 6:11 PM—This afternoon it poured and poured. There are so many people in this city and today they all got wet.

Introducing: Rex.
Rex noticed my white dress.
Rex watched me make deviled eggs in his kitchen.
Rex remembered the short conversation we had about Virginia Woolf and was seen last week in Myopic Books, purchasing a copy of To The Lighthouse.
Rex does not want to live in the same city as me.
Rex goes by a shortened version of his middle name. Rex was allowed to choose his middle name when he was 16, and he chose "Alexander".
If Rex could see me writing in my journal in this public airport terminal, it would be love at first sight. However, the likelihood of Rex writing poetry about me is pretty low. That's just the way things are.

Some days are filled with an inexplicable feeling of dread. I fear my pen will run out of ink before I have said everything I want to say, none of my clothes fit my tits the way I want them to, and I am able to think myself into a stomachache. I always say that if my reality were made into a photograph, anxiety would be the shadows-- just something you expect to see.

August 6th, 3:55 PM—I have been emotionally empty for quite some time now... for several years, and through several love affairs.

I do not like to sleep in public places unless that public place is a library. Some people cannot bear to sit down on a plane before it has taken off. Things will change, but not everything will change. The Universe is not to be trusted, but it can be your friend.

Rex was waiting for us on his porch, and he was the one who noticed my white dress.
Rex put his hand on my back as I lay belly-down in his bed.
A physic palm reader once told Rex that in a past life he was a hero of the Renaissance. 
Rex is not sure when he'll get his next haircut.
Rex saw my white dress and requested that I marry him in it.

You look out of a plane window and see a tiny version of a city you love. The plane tips, and the city disappears behind the wing before you've finished taking in the view.

The Two Times I’ve Dialed 911, or, I Can’t Believe We Still Hooked Up After Meeting That Sad Old Lady

The operator on the other end of your call to Emergency never sounds quite human. Their questions don’t sound like normal questions, they are mechanical, specifically designed to be understood under extreme pressure, to be easily and quickly answered. It’s easy to imagine that if you speak as they do, in layman’s terms, a conclusion ending in help will be possible. Reply to the operator’s questions in the same emotionless tone they ask them in, keep your head straight and deliver the facts. Their lack of empathy is calming, I guess.

The first time I had to call 9-1-1 was when my roommate, L—, fell out of her bunk in the middle of the night.She woke me up when she hit me on the way to the ground. I remember rising and feeling vague pain and confusion, and then finding L— on the ground. I quickly discovered that in her fall from the top bunk, L—  had hit her leg on the edge of my bed: the skin on her shin looked like a pint of strawberry ice cream with one long scoop spooned out of it. I laid her down on the floor, very slowly. We were both really scared. She could barely walk when they came for her but she hobbled down the long hallway to the elevator anyway, using my body as a crutch. I drove her in her car to the emergency room. There, they gave her 8 stitches.