June 2012
57 posts
1 tag
“You know that things become stories about other things. Everyone I used to love...”
– Lauren Ireland
2 tags
The Secret of Backs
Heels of the shoes worn down, each in its own way, sending signals to the spine.
The back of the knee as it folds and unfolds. In winter the creases of American-made jeans: blue denim seams worried to white threads.
And in summer, in spring, beneath the hems of skirts, Bermudas, old bathing suit elastic, the pleating and un-pleating of parchment skin.
And the dear, dear rears. Such variety!...
3 tags
I like to think he survived in order to find me, in order to arrive here, sober, tired from a long night of tongues and hands and thighs, music on the radio, coffee— so he could look up and see me, standing in the kitchen in his torn t-shirt, the hem of it brushing my knees, but I know it’s only luck that brought him here, luck and a love that had nothing to do with me, except that this is what we...
2 tags
bodies pare down over time to small letters, endstop, to names which are ascribed to them. cancer. sclerosis. alzheimers. they are us and not-us. we can leave them, and do, we can be notpresent, we can leave behind nothing but a body. at night, in the ICU, with family sobbing around us, or more simply, every day, small bits of us, gone.
aren’t we all something broken, and don’t we keep breaking...
2 tags
“I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not a comment...”
– David Ignatow
2 tags
And I wonder sometimes if steering wheels are just there to mock us. And I feel terrible about the whole argument between free will and destiny. All that I want is everything I want. Music and rain and slight variations between the two. Clay Matthews (excerpt from Poem In Which I Sort Of Break Down)
4 tags
You are a Sunday porch I could do nothing on and feel like everything was happening. Derrick Brown (excerpt from Waltzing the Hurricane)
1 tag
“To think, a sweater, is made entirely of knots. My stomach could clothe a...”
– Andrea Gibson
3 tags
I want to see you. Know your voice. Recognize you when you first come ‘round the corner. Sense your scent when I come into a room you’ve just left. Know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot. Become familiar with the way you purse your lips then let them part, just the slightest bit, when I lean in to your space and kiss you. I want to know the joy of how you whisper “more” Rumi
2 tags
Pussycat Interstellar Naked Hotrod Mofo Ladybug...
…there are things about you i collect and sell to no one. i journal them in a book you gave me with the inscription,
‘don’t leave your ribcage in the icicle air. something will break…’
…you are an electric chair disguised as a la-z-boy recliner and i find comfort in you…
…crush me with the satisfaction of your black misted, unclocked breath. i always come back to the secrets and wonder of your...
4 tags
Did you know that the metronome inside of us quickens when telling a lie? I want to live in an honest house where the motion detector is so sharp it knows when my thoughts leave the room. I want a clap-on lamp that works as a polygraph: when you swear you still love me, the lights flicker. Megan Falley (excerpt from The Honest House)
“You were once wild. Don’t let them tame you.”
– Isadora Duncan
7 tags
December
When my body had forgotten its purpose, when it just hung off my brainstem like whipped mule. When my hands only wrote. When my mouth only ate. When my ass sat, my eyes read, when my reflexes were answers to questions we all already knew. Remember how it was then that you slid your hand into me, a fork in the electric toaster of my body. Jesus, where did all these sparks come from? Where was all...
3 tags
I Don't Remember
I don’t remember, any more, The exact shape of your hands As I held them in mine, Caressed them, Memorized the length of your fingers, The depth of your calluses. I don’t remember, any more, Exactly your height, how much Taller than me You were, where My head rested on your chest When you held me tightly close. I don’t remember, any more, Your scent, when we lay together...
1 tag
“Thinking of me
while inside another woman
must feel like sitting in the new...”
– Megan Falley, ‘Bringing Over The Jelll-o Mold’
2 tags
Down There
This is how you refer to your genitalia. This is also where your mother told me, while standing at the basement door, I could find some ice cream. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
3 tags
If You Buy An Old Polygraph At a Swap Meet, Do Not...
When I first brought the thing home I had no idea it would change me for the better. Honesty is a wide shot of a movie lot. Now, I cannot trust lovers or anyone with curly hair. The clerk at my supermarket wants my life. The hairdresser keeps looking at my neck and then the scissors and then my neck. I don’t trust you. Your pants are baggy. You’ve got choking hands. All dresses are fingerprint...
3 tags
Here is the story of one man with strange light and tiny blisses.
a story of wild me lost among wild you.
I wanted to be down in the obscene with you. I wanted to see it all. To leave the black, slow sea of the heavens. How empty and pure peace can be. Days with no end. Navigating celestially. Bored to life.
I wanted to be with you. Derrick Brown
1 tag
If I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide I really wanted to write about love, my first poem would be about you, about how I love you the same way I learned how to ride a bike: scared, but reckless, with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you. Rudy Francisco
2 tags
At night you want to give your thoughts to someone, someone who will let you pour back and forth, the way you do between glasses to aerate the wine. Allison Campbell (excerpt from What to Know)
