AFTER READING OLD UNREQUITED LOVE POEMS - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

If I didn’t think it’d make me appear crazy still,

I’d apologize to you for having been so crazy then.

Reading the poems I had written about “us”

resurrected all that nervous heat, reminded me

of the insistent stutter of my longing,

how I could never just lay it out there for you.

The answer, clearly, would have been

no, thank you. But perhaps that tough line

would have been enough to salvage

all that was good and woolly about us:

your laugh, the golden ring I’d always

stretch a story for; the pair of mittens

we’d split in the cold so we’d each have

a hand to gesture with; how even now,

the paths we took are filled with starry wonder

and all that bright limitless air. I’m sorry

I could never see myself out

of the twitching fever of my heartache,

that I traded everything we had for

something that never ended up being.

But if I could take anything back, it wouldn’t be

the glittering hope I stuck in the amber of your eyes,

or the sweet eager of our conversations.

No, it would be that last stony path

to nothing, when we both gave up without

telling the other. How silence arrived

like a returned valentine on that morning

we finally taught our phones not to ring.

Next Second, You Were Gone - Randall Stephens

I heard about an old broken phone box
Where people would go to have imaginary conversations
At first, I found it foolish
And then I joined the queue.

When my turn came, I dialled your old number.
There was no ringtone, but I told you everything
and I waited in silence
as if you might respond. 

I thought I heard you breathe. 
Then I remembered they told me my life should go on. 
One second, you were here.

Confession - Samantha King

I hate you wouldn’t quite do it

I forgive you isn’t quite my speed

I regret meeting you would be a lie

The best thing for me

was removing you from my life

That, I am sure of

COLLECTING FUTURE LIVES - Stephen Dunn

Now that everybody was dead

only he and his brother knew

the blood secrets, the unequal

history each nervous system

keeps and rehearses

into a story, a life.

Over the years they’d agreed

to invent and remember

a long hum of good times,

love breaking through

during card games,

their father teaching them

to skip stones

under the Whitestone Bridge.

The smart liar in them

knew these stories

were for their children

who, that very moment

over dinner, were collecting

their future lives.

But sometimes

in their twice-a-year visits

late at night

when their wives had tired

of the old repetitions,

they’d bring up the silences

in the living room

after a voice had been raised,

father’s drinking, mother’s

long martyrdom before the gods

of propriety and common sense.

In their mannerisms

each could see the same ghosts.

And if they allowed themselves

to keep talking,

if they’d had enough to drink,

love would be all

that mattered, the love

they were cheated of

and the love they got,

the parental love

that if remembered at all

had been given, they decided,

and therefore could be given again.

The Sign of Saturn - Sharon Olds

Sometimes my daughter looks at me with an

amber black look, like my father

about to pass out from disgust, and I remember

she was born under the sign of Saturn,

the father who ate his children. Sometimes

the dark, silent back of her head

reminds me of him unconscious on the couch

every night, his face turned away.

Sometimes I hear her talking to her brother

with that coldness that passed for reason in him,

that anger hardened by will, and when she rages

into her room, and slams the door,

I can see his vast blank back

when he passed out to get away from us

and lay while the bourbon turned, in his brain,

to coal. Sometimes I see that coal

ignite in her eyes. As I talk to her,

trying to persuade her toward the human, her little

clear face tilts as if she can

not hear me, as if she were listening

to the blood in her own ear, instead,

her grandfather’s voice.

The Unfree Man - Friedrich Nietzsche

A. He stands and harks: what does he hear?

     What sound is ringing in his ear?

     What struck him down? What mortal fear?

B. Who once wore chains, will always think

     That he is followed by their clink.

Trust Is a Luxury - Bucky Sinister

Two of my coworkers are fucking.

They think no one knows.

They come in to work,

one takes the stairs

and the other the elevator.

They take long lunches together but

say nothing to each other in the office.

I want to tell them it’s okay,

I don’t care,

no one cares.

It wasn’t too long ago

that people used to fuck at work.

Fucking off meant just that:

you’d fuck off in the supply closet,

or an empty conference room,

or the stairwell that no one uses.

Now fucking off

means being on the Internet or

texting someone from your cell.

Even in the dotcom days

there were drunken company lunches,

baristas who sold grams of coke and eighths of weed

to anyone needing to take the edge off.

Not much fucking but there was plenty of porn.

A little more than ten years later

it all sounds made up.

***

It’s a beautiful day in Marin County

and if there weren’t a prison here,

I couldn’t afford to stand on this property.

At San Quentin

there’s a gun tower

between you and God.

Pray all you want,

but if you run

you will be shot

on general principle.

The sky is

low on the yard:

starts one breath

above the tower,

San Quentin

is a small island

surrounded by

the ocean of not here.

From the time the outer gate closes

until I get to receiving,

I think about every stupid thing

I could’ve gotten caught for,

How this would be a lot worse

than volunteering to run a poetry workshop.

I want to thank you for coming in,

she tells me.

We don’t get a lot of volunteers in here.

This is the hardest class to get into.

Everyone’s really excited about coming here.

There’s just one thing—

you have to sign this waiver,

we have a no hostage policy here.

If you are abducted during your class

we will not negotiate for your release.

It’s just a formality.         

And I think,

No, it’s not.

One more thing,

she says.

Here’s a whistle—

if anyone gets weird,

just blow this and we’ll be on it.

***

In a big meeting my boss says,

Well that’s all water over the dam now.

I start to laugh and cover it with a fake cough

and throat clearing.

That’s not the expression.

Water under a bridge is normal.

Water over a dam is very bad.

That’s a disaster.

Everyone is going to die.

I know how to do my work,

but I don’t know how to behave in an office.

The only job that ever came naturally to me

was working in a bar,

bouncing, barbacking, working the door;

it all made sense to me.

I understand how to break up a bar fight,

but not how to participate in a conference call.

This job is fine

until there are other people around.

The boss says,

We’re not drinking the Kool Aid on that one.

It’s a reference to the mass suicide at Jonestown.

and he’s talking about a corporate policy

on office supplies.

In the sexual harassment seminar

I was required to take,

they said I wasn’t allowed to say anything

that was offensive to anyone else,

even if it was on accident.

After 45 minutes of explaining it,

and a half hour video,

they said,

Just keep the golden rule in mind.

Which doesn’t apply—

if I treat people like I want to be treated

I’ll be fired.

***

At San Quentin

they tell me,

Don’t ask anyone

what he’s in there for.

Don’t give out your address

or your phone number.

Don’t give anyone

any articles of clothing.

And if you run on the yard

you will be shot—

if something happens

lie face down on the ground.

***

At work

they put up hand sanitizers everywhere.

I think,

Who the fuck

will use this?

But people complain

that they empty too fast.

There’s an extra trash can

by the bathroom door

so people can throw away

the paper towel they use

to open the door.

I have gone to neighborhoods

I shouldn’t have been in,

bought stuff I was pretty sure was drugs

from people I didn’t know,

and smoked them

with a pipe I made from garbage,

and I’m fine.

Raw chicken, old mayonnaise,

rusty nails in the foot—

there are germs to be wary of

but it’s not the germs on your keyboard

that are going to take you out.

***

In San Quentin

loose tobacco is currency

and trust is the luxury of free men.

There’s a guy

I think is mad dogging me

the whole first class.

A little while later

I find out

he’s just missing an eye.

One guy says

all he does

is eat sleep shit

work out and write poems

and jerk off

and I think

that’s what I call Saturday.

Another guy talks about his teeth.

Neither of us had gotten dental care

until the year he went to prison.

and I started working an office job

One guy tells me

he hasn’t been home for a family vacation

in five years.

That sounds great I think,

a perfect excuse.

***

For most of my life

I thought the office job

was impossible for me.

I thought San Quentin was more likely.

I have more friends who have done time

than have had corporate jobs.

I’ve heard more stories

about cellmates

than CEOs.

I read poems to the convicts.

They laughed in the right places,

got quiet in the right places,

they understood what I was saying.

I knew how to talk to them.

At work I agonize over emails,

don’t want them to be taken the wrong way.

I’m afraid of offending people,

sounding snide or sarcastic,

or that I don’t give a shit,

especially when I really

don’t give a shit.

The convicts know what it’s like

to hurt someone and feel bad about it,

that losing a fight heals,

but winning one can haunt you.

Free or convicted,

none of us really gets away

with anything.

In the ‘90s I was temping.

Fight Club came out.

We were talking about it,

I said, How the hell would you find

that many guys who had never been in a fight before?

The room was quiet.                                                                       

I was the only one.

It totally ruined my next

ecstasy trip

I was in the Cat Club.

They were playing T Rex:

70s music 80s clothes and 90s drugs.

I was almost thirty,

still figuring out why

my life wasn’t normal.

Until then I thought it

was just me.

I thought

there was just something

wrong with my brain

that I couldn’t take it

I tried to tell this girl

who looked like David Bowie.

I said, We are all normal,

it’s just our lives that are fucked up.

She looked at me and smiled,

pointed to her ear and mouthed,

I can’t hear you.

The convicts know what it’s like

to be small

and have to protect yourself

the best you can.

That fear and small

are forever connected.

They know what drugs make you feel big,

and that big means not afraid.

***

The workshop was only two weeks long.

I went back to work.

One of my coworkers accidentally

forwarded an email to me.

He was talking mad shit.

Bar life

Drug life

Says I have to call him out

in front of everyone.

Don’t look like a punk

But I wasn’t in a bar

or a crack house.

This wasn’t a drug deal,

this was an office

at the end of the F Line

at a job that

bought me a condo,

a truck,

and got my teeth fixed.

I printed the email out and took it to HR,

filed a harassment complaint.

There were a bunch of meetings after that.

I never felt any better about it.

I went home,

worked out,

wrote a poem,

ate,

shit,

jerked off,

and went to sleep.

LENS - Andrea Gibson

I’ve been practicing gratitude.

I’ve been skipping entire weeks.

Practicing a wider lens. Listening

for the bully’s heartbeat

Hearing it in my own chest.

I’ve been remembering the time I cried

in a cloud of tear gas at a peaceful protest.

How I decided I was too soft to last,

and then I decided to be softer.

I’ve been remembering way way back

to the moment they told me Jesus walked on water.

How I knew whatever I’d grow up to believe

I would never try to wrestle a miracle

away from anyone’s reason to live.

I’ve been remembering how I wrestled a miracle

away from your reason to live.

If only shame could wash me clean,

but that is never how healing works.

Nobody ever won anything from anyone

thinking the whole world was out of their league.

I’m sorry you know

what I look like when no one is looking.

I don’t expect anyone to believe

in justice and forgiveness at the same time.

If it’s any consolation

I feel like a ferris wheel in a snowbank

twenty years after they shut down the park.

If it’s any consolation I’ve been living in my head

whenever anyone tells me I have a good heart.

And I think about you. I think about you. 

Remember How Sad That Was When - Paul Guest

I missed sadness because I no longer missed you,

how emotionally counterintuitive it was

as my citizenship in the nation I made of you

gradually lapsed. I woke some other

place with lakes and blue skies and rush hours

and strangers I worried about. But no you.

No ages of you. No your name three times

when I walked somewhere or lay down at night

to bargain with sleep. No you

falling from my mouth everywhere I went.

No you anywhere to be seen.

A secret to keep. And mostly I did,

even beside other women who asked

with the privilege of their bodies

if you had ever existed and what did you do

and did you have a name I’d share

and had you been good to me

but I never gave you up. I left the last of you

to be lost in the fog inside me.

Napping in bomb craters, haggling

over debts I couldn’t deny were mine,

memorizing every month’s horoscope.

It seemed then the days

you had left me stained in sadness

were like that. Good apples on back order from God

and the steaks full of blood

you taught me to love, rationed.

At least I told myself this,

thinking of all the never you were.

But there were limits and lengths

and limits again. There were

songs inside the fog inside the world.

What I Should Have Said - MARTY MCCONNELL & EMILY KAGAN TRENCHARD

when you said that a wedding sounded

like something you could live with

so long as it was small

and local and not actually a ceremony

at all but a gathering

of some people we love but not

too many and not requiring

too much planning

I should have left you. should

have swallowed the velvet cushions

you leaned against, the ones salvaged

from the first couch my folks ever owned,

should have shredded the silk blanket

into rags, cracked my teeth

on the wood bed-frame, anything

but stay. love, you are the best

of my failures. how educated I've become

in the ways of silence. the woman

who follows me from room

to room in this new house has so

many hands there are not enough days

to fill them. when you did not

say no to the possibility

of a child I should never

have taken that for yes.

should have gathered

my ovaries like a fistful

of amaranth and run

all the way to Chicago.

who did I think we were.

who did I think

I could make you.

this is the oldest mistake,

to confuse wanting

with magic. silence is the undoing

of every spell, and we are experts

in the unsaid. even now, I forget

to put us in past tense. as if

the air in this city were the same.

as if love is anything like its speaking.