on the hunt for how we might voice grief.
i
i
cut off parts of my own spine//
letting it all loose.
i left them behind && i
fetched them back in dreams//
//slowly// .
piece by burning piece.
&& my lover measured me up by the firelight:
unclean beast tumbling from my collarbones forward//
embers
in every freckle// soot
in every freckle// scars
in every freckle.
how do you learn that.
how do you feel your gentle inside
&& be told you are // in fact// sharded
glass.
how do you touch your own skin
without feeling the great amounts of space the night sky carries above its
massive elbows//
the kind of space you felt most clearly//
as a child.
(take a second & call that sensation back)
Barstool Tale
A bikini strap crept from beneath her terrycloth robe sometimes at lunch. 10:30, every day. We’d eat sandwiches, she’d put the dishes in the sink, kiss me, then shut herself in her office until 3:00. A lot of her regulars popped on during lunch breaks.
She had told me she was a cam girl long before, and when I told her I didn’t care, I meant it—yeah, that’d be great, IPA—I meant it, mostly. But day after day, sitting just on the other side of the wall—no, fresh glass, thanks—I thought about it more and more. Wouldn't you?
After I moved in four months back, I asked if I could sit in the corner while she cammed. She giggled sweetly and said, “no.” She didn’t giggle when I asked the second time or the third.
I brought up the popping sounds, in a cute jokey way. She smiled but said nothing. Then she bought me a pair of Beats. Noise cancelling.
I kept thinking about it, more near the end. Reading sleep study data is a boring fucking job, in case you didn’t know, even if your girlfriend isn’t undressing next door. I thought she had to be lying about something, if I couldn’t watch. This morning I finally did it: I logged in. Don’t fucking look at me like that, I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. I changed my screen name to “Looner666” to fit in.
And there she was, on my screen, just like she’d said. And there was her bikini, small, but fully on and not crazy small; it was the one she wore to the beach when she rented a house for my birthday.
And there were the balloons.
She was grinding on a huge purple one. It popped, and as she tumbled onto the bed and laughed the chat went wild, I mean, she was getting tips left and right. She got a small green one, I think left over from my nephew’s birthday. She knelt and stuck her butt toward the camera and laid the green balloon on her calves. “I don’t know, boys,” she said into my noise-cancelling Beats, “I might be too much for this one.”
I shut my laptop and eyes. I couldn’t stop seeing it, though, her ass descending toward the balloon. Yeah, go ahead, laugh, but I wasn’t laughing, and I no longer gave a damn if Patient 10347 had sleep apnea, so I went for a walk. I ended up at the liquor store. Then I ended up at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
I had martini in hand when her terrycloth robe stepped out of her office. She saw me in the jacket and tie first, I think, and the new exercise ball beside the sofa second. “Bounce for me,” I told her.
She clammed up. She came back five minutes later in a sweatshirt to tell me she didn’t like my tone. She said to leave the key on the counter by Monday.
Women.
Smoke Plumes
Getting older, you have to choke upon yourself
a little bit. The rain comes & the creek floods & suddenly you--
a river. Raging. Here, the beds where once your hands
were so gentle. Here, the evacuation order
to the residents. Here, the ones that sit on their porches
and watch, wait
anyways. Crack open beers and pour white wine
over ice cubes.
The rain comes & so does the lightning & in the midst of summer--
brushfires. Ash the landscape like a cigarette. Smoke the whole valley.
You pray for your home harder in a fire than in any other
natural disaster,
we think. Smoke plumes turn the sunset pink
in the most sinister way. Two years ago they turned
the sun red on summer solstice. Divinity is always in the clouds.
Divinity is in natural disaster. It's the closest you stand to god,
sometimes.
(not always, please
remember, these
summer months
can just be ugly.)
Portrait of you as my grief; portrait of me as your exhibit
You say so many words for distance
that I begin to measure breadths
everywhere—
(I’m always short, the amount I am)
I want to claim I’m past my grief’s
whooping—but I still hear it.
(You’re water, we’re in each other)
Post-swim, I shake some of you
out through my ears. Listen,
I would choose not to love you.
(if I could)
I tell my body to steer my heart’s
helm, wear the suit. I captain myself.
(I control the ache that I am)
Except the suit scratches, the boat
won’t move, I am posing with the display
inside of your museum—
DOUBTS ON MY PILLOW
I lay here and wonder why,
Why can’t I just really try,
Try my best to be glad,
Glad that he’s not always mad,
Mad at me the way he used to,
He’s nicer and sweeter too,
To me he is still neglecting though, and I don’t know what to do….
Do about it because I don’t wanna mess up what is good,
Good but still not quite enough for me,
Me you see, I think that’s the problem I face,
Facing it because it\s all my fault I can’t be happy,
Happy he’s atleast trying,
Trying to do his best,
Best isn’t always good
I lay here and wonder why,
Why can’t I just really try,
Try my best to be glad,
Glad that he’s not always mad,
Mad at me the way he used to,
He’s nicer and sweeter too,
To me he is still neglecting though, and I don’t know what to do….
Do about it because I don’t wanna mess up what is good,
Good but still not quite enough for me,
Me you see, I think that’s the problem I face,
Facing it because it\s all my fault I can’t be happy,
Happy he’s atleast trying,
Trying to do his best,
Best isn’t always good enough and for that I am sorry,
Sorry that I am failing….
Failing at just about everything, even when he’s putting forth an effort,
An effort that I hope I can take,
Take and hold and run with my all,
All that I have because above everything else he is my love,
Love that will not break or fail; no,
No I affirm, for his soul is mine and mine is his and for eternity we will together, this life overthrow…
ARay
Unfinished Poem
Sapere aude
The moon stretched across my skin
And the light
Which spills
in
a
flood
Pouring
out
of the sun
in my chest –
There is such beauty
revealed
In a flash of light
Love is a gift, despite
Not all men being worthy of it
Louder, Louder, LOUDER
Wide mouth like a scarlet flower
And dark eyes which render a face
Uncommonly intelligent
To be born woman is to know
We must labor to be beautiful
To bear the Sistine Chapel
Between our ears
Down our torsos
Turn around, Orpheus,
The darkness calls
Louder, louder, louder
Memory transforms
Lovers into poets
Melancholia swallows men
Whole
blackbird lamentation
on my sixty-seventh birthday i stand in the middle of a cornfield
and pry my ribcage open with two sharp rocks.
there are birds between my lungs, made mad
by wombs of semi-dark, never having learned
to fly, never having sung except
as the world lie sleeping.
these bodies falling out of my body,
tired bodies, feeble and hollow-boned,
and my body becoming the empty church,
shedding sins like snakeskin, trailing past long and heavy.
it begins to rain, so i will drown soon, and look, the birds like oil spills
slick slick slick in the water, and the black swan dancers preparing my funeral song.
i remember my mother and the way she always told me not to get caught in the rain.
i remember the way she took a blackbird hungry, cold, from a storm,
and perched him on her shoulder. the birds at my feet begin to sing
in the downpour, calm and low, a song about light emerging
from the darkness of the throat. they don’t know how to fight
but they do it anyway. our bones shake with the hymnal.
war prayer. church blessing. filling and hungry.
it’s the kind of melody that sounds like a lover’s voice
beside you in bed in the middle of a dream about drowning.
