Cover image for post First Thing When I Wake Up, I’ll Try to Leave You, by minneapolis

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First Thing When I Wake Up, I’ll Try to Leave You

It was afternoon near a lake.

You were there, of course.

I think I need a little space, I said,

and that we had nothing else to say to one another but goodbye,

good luck, and, would you please consume me

now, please, before the water takes me?

The failing light was the color of a young pine fire.

The air coming up from the water smelled of new cantaloupe.

I thought I saw a very small walrus

on an ice block in the distance.

The grass we were lying on sloped toward the lake.

The air coming down the slope smelled of rotting maple leaves.

I had read in the newspaper that

the congressman wears stick pin collars.

He wears French cuffs. The congressman said,

“We’re going to give them the devil.”

—You have made me impossibly happy,

you said to me.

You failed to look me in the eye.

—You know the eighteen parts of my clitoral network

and their functions, you said.

You were not looking at me,

but at the temporary voting booth

that you, too, perceived as a very small walrus

atop an ice block—or a snow cone stand.

—You gave me books of poetry and I read them, you said.

You had given me books, too, which I placed in my pile.

—You make my face feel hot and a little sweaty, you said.

You were surprised that ice was still purveyed in block form,

and even as you re-described the form and function

of your clitoris’s eighteen (sometimes nineteen) parts,

I could see disappointment streak your irises

upon recognizing that the temporary voting booth

was not a walrus.

—You should go for some red popsicles, you said.

The congressman is quite good, off-the-cuff.

He looks a body in the eye.

I had been following closely the media coverage.

I said to the congressman:

The oftener I think of dying,

the fewer mean things I say to people.

The rain began and fell like shaved ice.

Still, there were boys running shirtless.

We tried together to think of the word

for fresh rain smell on mixed surfaces.

We made a list of the current surfaces:

Dead, straw colored grass;

Live blue fescue grass, (bluish);

Your stomach, (soft, white,

hard to keep from blowing on);

The water of the flashing and bursting lake;

The burbling water of the fountain near the lake;

(You dropped three olives—

one nicoise, one oil-cured, one royal—

into the short glass of potato vodka I was holding.

I thanked you with one of my feet for

leading me to an understanding

of the three party system.

I began for the first time to really drink

the short glass of potato vodka I was holding.)

Potato vodka and olives;

Agapanthus leaves (someone had cut the flowers);

The backs and shoulders of the boys running shirtless;

Cotinus leaves and their wispy plumes (I could smell smoke.)

(My chest and face felt warm

from the potato vodka and I tried to kiss you.

You turned your left temple into mine

and held it there, preventing full facial contact,

until I gave up.)

A pack of cigarettes made from a kind of tobacco

used to make cigars;

Vitis labrusca leaves;

Grapes, not quite ready, too tart,

may have actually been currants;

The umbrella mounted over the temporary voting booth;

Shore pine needles and limbs;

(We tried holding hands.

The positions of our bodies made it feel overly formal,

like shaking hands.)

The top of my right hand;

The cuticles and nails of your right hand;

Potato leaves and dangling purple flowers.

Picnic tables the color of driftwood,

fried chicken grease worked into the grain;

ducks.

(I wanted to start over.)

The congressman winked at me.

The ducks began to make love violently.

I began to hope that one of the boys jogging shirtless

would make an attempt on my life so that you could save me

and I would belong to you always.

Sex is such a tired ending for me, I thought.

Death is worse, I thought.

There were ducks in the fountain near the lake.

I remember that. I said to the congressman:

When I’m dead I’ll have plenty of space.