some poems
Look! I wrote some poems--four of them!--and I am posting them here. This hasn't happened in a while. You should be excited.
These were mostly written for my poetry class this semester, but I'm pretty sure I don't hate them. Two of them are a little prosey, maybe more flash fiction, but the other two are pretty poem-esque.
Propagandistic
There's a man with no ears on the corner. He plays the saxophone with a strap around his neck. He plays the saxophone with a hat at his feet. He plays the saxophone for the woman in the blindfold.
Tousled frenzy tangles her hair like fighting or sex or seaweed. She unbuttons her starch-collared shirt in ecstasy. Five buttons, opening down to the place where her breasts curve together and meet. An eye opens in between them. It does not see God or good men or next Thursday. It sees the man with no ears, it sees the saxophone. It sees the hat on the sidewalk and two round breasts like blinders.
Her head is thrown back and she dances in spasms. She is electrocuted. Her lips are swollen.
She has been eating pomegranates.
A man takes a photo of her breasts. The photo is posted on the internet, and the eye sees nothing. She opens her mouth where her tongue is thick and red.
"I am a woman of virtue. Please do not touch me."
in the palace
we lit the fires today,
kerosene-blue and tall,
with see-through shadows
threshing on the gravel
around the imagined feet of
metal trash cans
with the raised
rings around the sides
and rust flakes and sick-
sweet and burn smell.
we took them from street
people and ex-fathers,
emptied their lives out
on the stoop of the Palace
of Low Expectations,
and we were caught
in the act of dying across
the country, ink-handed and
bloody with the things
we told each other,
like "no" and "owe" and "fault"
and "where is the alphabet?"
is how you would try
to get my attention when
the road was no longer empty.
dude, we were on fire.
cartographer
your body is a map of the city,
creased and stained
with handwritten notes,
the legend worn away,
not that I ever looked.
I-44 climbs up your right leg,
thick and yellow like a bulging
vein, and 7th street cuts across
your hips to meet it,
circles round your back.
there is the mall
where I buy Christmas presents
and shoes.
Rangeline crosses your eye
and cuts down your neck
like rainwater running
and disappears
down between your legs.
Starbucks is cradled
on one side, higher up,
in the valley of your collar bone.
I fold you up and slip you
in my pocket, and you cry
that it hurts to be folded,
and my pocket is too small.
you should have considered
more carefully being a map.
I stop for coffee,
venti with nonfat milk
and Splenda.
A Place for Keeping Birds
I think I am fascinated by birds. Each movement is so precise, like a machine's. So streamlined, so seamless. The oil-slick feathers, the bubble-sheen gloss, the black pearl eye.
I think one day I will stop being what I am and be a bird instead. When I die, maybe.
I will trill in high branches. I will hop across groomed suburban lawns. And I will peck at the lava glass beetles as they trek over well-traveled sidewalks.
These were mostly written for my poetry class this semester, but I'm pretty sure I don't hate them. Two of them are a little prosey, maybe more flash fiction, but the other two are pretty poem-esque.
Propagandistic
There's a man with no ears on the corner. He plays the saxophone with a strap around his neck. He plays the saxophone with a hat at his feet. He plays the saxophone for the woman in the blindfold.
Tousled frenzy tangles her hair like fighting or sex or seaweed. She unbuttons her starch-collared shirt in ecstasy. Five buttons, opening down to the place where her breasts curve together and meet. An eye opens in between them. It does not see God or good men or next Thursday. It sees the man with no ears, it sees the saxophone. It sees the hat on the sidewalk and two round breasts like blinders.
Her head is thrown back and she dances in spasms. She is electrocuted. Her lips are swollen.
She has been eating pomegranates.
A man takes a photo of her breasts. The photo is posted on the internet, and the eye sees nothing. She opens her mouth where her tongue is thick and red.
"I am a woman of virtue. Please do not touch me."
in the palace
we lit the fires today,
kerosene-blue and tall,
with see-through shadows
threshing on the gravel
around the imagined feet of
metal trash cans
with the raised
rings around the sides
and rust flakes and sick-
sweet and burn smell.
we took them from street
people and ex-fathers,
emptied their lives out
on the stoop of the Palace
of Low Expectations,
and we were caught
in the act of dying across
the country, ink-handed and
bloody with the things
we told each other,
like "no" and "owe" and "fault"
and "where is the alphabet?"
is how you would try
to get my attention when
the road was no longer empty.
dude, we were on fire.
cartographer
your body is a map of the city,
creased and stained
with handwritten notes,
the legend worn away,
not that I ever looked.
I-44 climbs up your right leg,
thick and yellow like a bulging
vein, and 7th street cuts across
your hips to meet it,
circles round your back.
there is the mall
where I buy Christmas presents
and shoes.
Rangeline crosses your eye
and cuts down your neck
like rainwater running
and disappears
down between your legs.
Starbucks is cradled
on one side, higher up,
in the valley of your collar bone.
I fold you up and slip you
in my pocket, and you cry
that it hurts to be folded,
and my pocket is too small.
you should have considered
more carefully being a map.
I stop for coffee,
venti with nonfat milk
and Splenda.
A Place for Keeping Birds
I think I am fascinated by birds. Each movement is so precise, like a machine's. So streamlined, so seamless. The oil-slick feathers, the bubble-sheen gloss, the black pearl eye.
I think one day I will stop being what I am and be a bird instead. When I die, maybe.
I will trill in high branches. I will hop across groomed suburban lawns. And I will peck at the lava glass beetles as they trek over well-traveled sidewalks.