5/24/17

HEAVENLY CREATURE - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz


For Missy


I remember the day you showed up at the bus stop:
quiet, pale, a thick veil of dark hair, we stared

at each other through overgrown bangs. We were just
beginning our dry sentences at Baldi Middle School.

In those days, our jeans would be tattooed weekly
with the coded names of every boy who flicked

his eyes our way. The backs of our hands became
necks and lips for practicing on. I once even

doused my backpack with my brother’s cologne,
a sad effort to at least smell like I’d had a boyfriend.

Walking around your housing complex, we’d stare
through the windshields of every man who drove by.

We thought of our bodies as dangerous chemicals,
our breasts as match tips waiting for love’s flinty gaze

We were sure all the boys around had firecracker hearts
just waiting to explode. And look, I know I know I know

I am not telling the whole truth. Things in your house
were different, were not right, were accepted because

maybe no one knew any better, or maybe they did
and didn’t care. And whenever the whole dark truth

would spill out, I remember I’d gather my features
into the center of my face, unable to figure out

the right combination for my concern, for fresh alarm.
I’d forget how to sit, how to blink, breathe. It’s true,

sometimes you look back and all the things
you should have done rise up like volcanic islands,

whole civilizations, whole existences, whole lifetimes.
But what did we know then? Fourteen, I took

the hammer of my dumb tongue and tried to tap
comfort into your impossibly small ears,

your impossibly small fists. We were kids,
and the future was our dependable escape plan.

We’d be gone soon, so you had just better suffer through
it all now. We’d be gone, so until then, I tried

to make you laugh. I’m sorry I never realized
I could’ve unlocked your exit earlier, that I

could’ve released your story from the shogun
of my own throat. The letters you send me now

are like postcards from that hopeful future:
you are okay, you are alright, with no return address.

So this poem is a telegram to let you know that
I still think about you, that I’m still proud of you,

that when I remember you, I always remember you
as beautiful.

5/10/17

in which you anxiously anticipate events that will not occur - Mira Gonzalez

in the end he told you that he didn’t want you
but he never did you the courtesy of leaving

out of necessity, you reconstructed your identity around being alone
though you almost never thought of it in those terms

you spent time allowing all the wrong people to think you are beautiful
watching them blindly perform unreciprocated feelings onto you
at a distance twice removed from the act

because you refuse to know the feeling of not loving anything
though the feeling will force itself into you sometimes

everyone will tell you what the most painful part is

they will say it’s the moment nothing is left for you in him
or it’s the moment he finds you in someone else

but nobody will tell you that it is possible
to move further from reality every day
until there are no parts of you in anything

5/5/17

The Swan At Edgewater Park - Ruth L. Schwartz

Isn’t one of your prissy richpeoples’ swans
Wouldn’t be at home on some pristine pond
Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers,
condoms
          in its tidal fringe
Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck
          into the body of a Great Lake,
Swilling whatever it is swans swill,
Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud,
While Clevelanders walk by saying Look
          at that big duck!
Beauty isn’t the point here; of course
          the swan is beautiful,
But not like Lorie at 16, when
Everything was possible—no
More like Lorie at 27
Smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,
Her kid with asthma watching TV,
The boyfriend who doesn’t know yet she’s gonna
Leave him, washing his car out back—and
He’s a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and
It’s not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he
Really does, he loves them both—
That’s the kind of swan this is.

5/4/17

Crow, Scarecrow - Leonard Gontarek

A crow sits on the head

of a scarecrow. I see myself in that.

Which part of fuck off don't I understand.

5/3/17

Five of Swords, for all my death girls - Marty McConnell

Betsy’s in the second stall practicing
with a plastic razor, so I lie on the floor
to listen for the janitor, the cart’s

loose wheel squeaking our names down
the evening-empty hallway. the weeks
she was at Lutheran General, I didn’t

go to visit. but I know from her stories
what the doors looked like, closing,
how they strapped her to the bed
for her own protection. we’re 17

and I adore her despair. I think she’s shining,
fearless, carving herself a body that’s nothing
but light. on the way home, she lets me
drive. tells me there’s a trick

to disintegrating in increments subtle enough
not to trip the alarm wires, to hiding cigarettes
and death from therapists and parents and this,

all my girls have had down: how to go and go
until the night is too fragile or grimy
and then the fanfare, the wild dive

from the spire, the water tower, the clock
yanking its hands back, how to dangle
from the spotlight once everybody’s
watching. 1999: we lie on Angie’s futon

searching the phonebook for institutions
that will take her without insurance, curl
our bodies into still commas of want
to wait for morning. they take

her shoelaces, and her cigarettes, and I watch.
they give her forms and more forms
and I watch. they walk her to the room

with its single bed and single dresser
and unsmashable mirror and I ride
the long, high buzz of the door back

to New York. 2003: Georgiana is an expert
in suicide and poetry. her medicine cabinet rattles
like a jar of vengeful bees. she wants me
to find her. all our idols are martyrs, not one of them

a saint. her hair drops like cabernet all the way
to her waist. and how she needs me. my simple body
becomes bread in her mouth, I’m whiskey,
an obliteration who’ll get up in the morning

to call the hospital and make coffee. oh,
my pretty ones in love with the beast
of disappearing, there are many ways

to give birth. not one is without pain.
there are almost as many ways to die
as there are to love. tonight, I drink to you

who chose to keep going, who moved
through my body like a chemical
I could not keep. the night stands outside
like a hungry dog on an old chain, the scent

of lilies rising from the half moons of his teeth.
go ahead. tuck your babies into bed
and lovers’ hair behind their soft ears, as if
there’s nothing left to fear.

5/2/17

twilight musings - Charles Bukowski


the drifting of the mind.

the slow loss, the leaking away.

one’s demise is not very interesting.

from my bed I watch 3 birds through the east window:

one coal black, one dark brown, the

other yellow.

as night falls I watch the red lights on the bridge blink on and off.

I am stretched out in bed with the covers up to my chin.

I have no idea who won at the racetrack today.

I must go back into the hospital tomorrow.

why me?

why not?

5/1/17

LETTER TO A LOST FRIEND - RICHARD SHELTON


War, trade, religious debts to discharge, these are mostly the reasons
for men’s distant journeyings: but you take pleasure in distant journeys
without reason.                                                               – St.-John Perse

we do not realize what we want
until we learn
what we are willing to give up for it
and you did God knows you did

when swimming was no longer possible
you learned to sink you learned
to live at the bottom of the sea

now tell me of the chambers where you sleep
tell me it does not matter
lie if you must

is your bed luminous is it festooned
with seaweed do all your narrow windows
open onto water
is the tide kind to you

forgive me if I do not understand

last night a stranger asked me what
gives you most pleasure and before I thought
I answered her revenge