Piled, freshly-shoveled, on my hip, something like
ticker-paper
lines of poetry began to stream through my mind,
I thought, There’s some sort of transfer going on here,
out from your mouth, into my mouth, and into my brain--
At the exact moment of your exhalation, the bright son of
panic
broke into your room and my body began to shake
like the sea-leg sensation one gets after a 6 minute mile.
II.
The astringent cherry blow pop I swirled around my mouth
You said would aggravate your already swollen taste buds.
That same blow pop I took from my mouth with my left hand
When I felt your right on my cheek, like David came to
Jonathan--
A heart beat. Your roommate came
Into the room and said, “You two!”
This same cherry blow pop is currently stuck
To the bottom of my recycle bin, I did not finish eating it.
III.
When we were making marble-dust gesso out of rabbit-glue
paste, my art teacher told us her mother was born in England
in 1920
was there for the War, and came to Texas to die near her
daughter
in a hospice. My art teacher told me that when the moment
came,
it only took 8 hours, which is relatively short for a
hospice death.
The class stirred wooden spoons through congealing gesso,
nodded and agreed, that was relatively short for a hospice
death.
IV.
I met a sweet pup on my way home from school
I called her "good boy" until I saw her squat to
pee.
She was black and white with a yoke for a collar.
She trotted behind me until I reached my porch,
Her ears pressed back against her head, like folded wings
Eyes bright, nose wet and cold, tail slowly swaying like a
metronome
She tamely sat at the end of my walkway as I went inside
to fetch her a piece of turkey meat from the fridge.
V.
A bottle to my chest, breathing, intensely aware of you,
Last Friday night we both sunk into the curve of a couch
In a hot room, my bangs plastered to my face, sweating
Off makeup and my perfume changing smells as my temp rose
You nodded to my thumbnail and asked,
"What would you call this color?"
I replied with the name on the bottom of the bottle.
"Wicked."
VI.
The other day I got a text from Rex. Turns out
he finally found my number from August when I wrote it
in his yellow-paged notebook. The text was a picture
of the painting he made of me as an art class model:
Seated, my arm over my head, bent at the elbow, nude.
I showed it to Becky, she told me I should wait a day to
reply.
I haven’t replied yet because I don’t know what to say
And I care about Rex, and I want it to be perfect.
VII.
When I saw you tonight, I planned to tell you about the
coldness in my arms
And the numbness in my hands that I feel when I think about
the words
you said to me, I imagined you would listen to me and nod
your head
as your top-heavy heart galloped, as always, to the beat of
a sneaker in the wash.
Instead you asked me why I have to write, and how it feels
when I don’t
I told you it feels weird, and nothing makes sense
like inside of me are stacks and stacks of heavy metals and
bricks.
VIII.
There's no way to prepare for this besides
to repeat your name quietly to myself so that it sounds
natural when it comes out of my mouth when I greet you.
I have noticed that the cherry trees in the spring really do
leap with a vigor into their own time when it comes
and I knew she was nice because she came to me
with
her head bowed down
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