What She Wanted - Topher Cusumano

She’s walking down the street in a pair of six-inch, red, patent leather heels.

She always wished she was taller.

She shaves off her eyebrows and paints them back on.

She’ll be the first to tell you she enjoys the attention—

She’s okay with that.

‘Damn, I wanna fuck this girl,’

he thinks to himself as he follows her home,

the Boston streets slowly becoming narrower,

fewer streetlights scattered in front of the old, brick row-houses,

thick, circular patches of light surrounded by shadow.

He can hear her clicking as she walks.

She walks fast.

She knows where she’s going.

He could hear her clicking only half a block ahead of him.

“Damn, I wanna fuck this girl, yo.

Yo honey, with the fat ass!”

She stops.

She turns.

“Me?” she asks.

Softly, ladylike.

The voice he wants her to have.

The voice you can fuck, and still muffle with only one hand.

“Yeah you mommy—

You wanna come home with me tonight?

You looking real good, girl—

I wanna fuck that ass of yours real good, girl.”

“Me?” she asks again.

“You wanna fuck… me?”

She wears her tits like panties,

She’s got tits built for warfare, this girl.

She’s a battleship, unsinkable by nature.

Scars from girlhood across her thighs,

Wears short skirts so they wonder where she’s been.

She’s been… everywhere.

She walks back toward him.

“Yeah that’s right mommy.

You know what you want.”

And she does.

She knows exactly what she wants.

“You wanna fuck me?” she asks.

They’re face-to-face now.

She notices how dead his eyes are.

She knows how many girls he’s seen ripped apart,

Lying under him.

“You wanna fuck me?”

“Yeah mommy.”

She remembers fourteen.

“You wanna fuck me?”

I Feel Safe When You Lie - Derrick Brown

In somno securitas.

She slid into bed

easy as a knitting needle

into the spine of a hare.

I threw a bag of chalk into the air

across her body

while she slept.

Little rabbit.

I lit black lights into action

watched the frenzied prints emerge

from her breasts, neck, and thighs,

souvenirs of desire.

I breathed across her tight, sand-tanned stomach.

Chalk dust blew into her nose and she awoke.

I asked her

If the man made love to her with all his might?

Did it feel the same?

Did his beads of sweat fall upon the necklace I worked for?

Did he extend the milky antennae of her legs into the air?

Did you tune in God on the meat hook channel?

She said:

“My dear.

Slow, jealous detective,

Come sleep by me.

These prints are yours

And always yours.

They simply will not wash away.

You have had your head in other people’s hands for so long

you forget what your own touch looked like.”

The faders of twilight approached.

I curled into her with my arms,

dead across her ribs,

feeling the rate of her heartbeat increase

as she wonders if I can feel a lie through her nightgown.

It is a feeling I get

when ice-skating through the rising crackles of sunshine.

In sleep, there is safety.

Trillium - Louise Gluck

When I woke up I was in a forest. The dark

seemed natural, the sky through the pine trees

thick with many lights.

I knew nothing; I could do nothing but see.

And as I watched, all the lights of heaven

faded to make a single thing, a fire

burning through the cool firs.

Then it wasn't possible any longer

to stare at heaven and not be destroyed.

Are there souls that need

death's presence, as I require protection?

I think if I speak long enough

I will answer that question, I will see

whatever they see, a ladder

reaching through the firs, whatever

calls them to exchange their lives--

Think what I understand already.

I woke up ignorant in a forest;

only a moment ago, I didn't know my voice

if one were given to me

would be so full of grief, my sentences

like cries strung together.

I didn't even know I felt grief

until that word came, until I felt

rain streaming from me.

Beauty: A Poem - John McDermott

A few months before

my older son took his life

he called home and told his mom

I saw beauty

and know what you and Dad

have been talking about.

I was up so late last night

that I looked out from my balcony

and saw the sun come up.

It was so beautiful that

I just wanted to tell you.

I love you, Mom.

If You Forget Me - Pablo Neruda

I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats

that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,

if little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly

you forget me

do not look for me,

for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,

the wind of banners

that passes through my life,

and you decide

to leave me at the shore

of the heart where I have roots,

remember

that on that day,

at that hour,

I shall lift my arms

and my roots will set off

to seek another land.

But

if each day,

each hour,

you feel that you are destined for me

with implacable sweetness,

if each day a flower

climbs up to your lips to seek me,

ah my love, ah my own,

in me all that fire is repeated,

in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,

my love feeds on your love, beloved,

and as long as you live it will be in your arms

without leaving mine

Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.