relocation

so this is what happens when the heat settles over us at last, and the grime on my jeans sinks in for good. i wish the sugar packets in their rainbow of colors would open to show crystals of pink and blue and yellow and brown; we could mix them into magic potions to sweeten our stews and cast reckless spells on rainy day wishes.

but first the more practical ones - endless bus rides, train rides, everything but bike rides when my wheel is bent from that careful collision, that entanglement of pedals frames limbs smashing to the concrete and we both emerged with scrapes and bruises but my two-wheeler is injured to the point of replacement, to the point of me and my two feet walking two miles at two in the morning past not one but two memorials for drive-by shooting victims (and what sort of place do we live in anyhow?) to end up with blisters on heels and bangs in eyes while we climb to the rooftop to watch smoke and songs drift up from below on red wine vapors and cigarette grins. collapse in the grass and roll our eyes at boys who don't get it, shake head arms feet hair fast fast fast and explode out into the night into the street making eyes at beauties on bikes. sure they all look the same but it's in the way we like them, tall and wispy and redundant.

please just be something new. someone unfamiliar. i want to take you on a date to that restaurant, the one where we'll sit on the patio and share horchata & chips, and i'll wear my new dress and you'll stare at my chest and afterwards i'll let you walk me home. i wish the sidewalk would melt. it's getting lonely here in this house furnished entirely with milk crates and rolling papers and postage stamps. i'm bedless and yr phone is unplugged and we haven't been home in decades. my birthday's kind of soon - don't forget to send a card.

finals week; finality; finally

I smell like cigarettes and sleep deprivation, like the desperation that comes from last-minute scrambles for the deadline, like leaning yr head against a brick wall and staring up through tired eyelashes to a sky that is somehow already getting light. And when I wake from too-short naps in the morning with the blankets twisted under me forcing me into strange contortions, when I unfold my leadweight limbs and creep into another day, I wake from dreams of linguistic symbols and lurid emails, shaking sleep from my hair and checking to see if these responsibilities are still real.

(they are)




and maybe tonight we’ll wash it all away with triumphant grins and drinks in the dark. and if morning touches us we’ll cheer, proud not to have wasted the night. I want the fingers of dawn to be a revelation once more and not a punishment, not a reminder that time is ticking by too fast when all i envision is darkness to soothe me to rest.

raindrops on roses

...now i just chain-smoke and eat costa rican chocolate and whine about these preppy awkward clean boys who pursue me.

we dismantle bikes in the park and ask you to read shakespearean analysis aloud, greasy hands and sunburned shoulders and forgetting to go to work on time. when i lay back barefoot in the grass there were dandelions everywhere and we blew endless white fluffy wishes to the wind.

when i kissed him last night i knew he'd still bore me sober.

when my friends can't keep them straight i know they're all the same story. i'd like someone grimy and crude to crash into me, no more of these ones who flirt and retreat and look so scared. tonight warm turned to cold and you forgot yr bravado. tonight i forgot to close my window against the wind.

a meditation on my pretenses of idealism

we talk of revolutions till our hair turns to dust, till the whiskey can no longer wet our parched throats; we lean excitedly forward plunging elbows into tabletops, jutting feverish foreheads into the chasms between our ideologies and realities, into circles of dialogue and inspiration as our hands fly up in wild gesticulations flinging unseen scraps or romantic ideals to the rafters out the windows to flee or maybe flit back gently drifting to land like lint to be brushed off our shoulders. & when we settle back satisfied into our chairs, drop damp shoulders limp into wooden embraces, silence hangs dense between our exhausted post-satisfaction grins. flickering lights to hide our doubts in the shadows, to bring our stuffy words to fiery life.

cough

watch out or i'll cough you out of me too
expell the last vestiges of yr smile still clinging
to the insides of my chest
i think by now you've stopped calling
& i think by now i'm glad
cuz i was feeling guilty
about never having time
but watch out or i'll let you forget me
watch out or our eyes will lose
each other's silhouettes, imagined,
in those empty lacking spaces.
my memory's not so good these days & if
you don't force yr way in
i think i'll disappear for good.

critical mass

& we rode for miles giddy in the crowds of bikes & yells & grins, and we found sidewalk drummers, found our rhythms so we blocked the intersection dancing in the street laughing and shaking our hair pounding our feet on the asphalt till we got too hungry then away! away! to long tables where we packed around huge pots of dim sum and ate till we were glowing flushed with spices & full bellies, pedaled home talking about summers & histories & tired thighs. home to catch our breath, then to parties full of dresses and careful hair where we burst in tousled and sweaty to sit swinging legs off the edge of the roof raising cans of cheap beer and stealing drags off wet cigarettes. police intrusion so off shivering to another apartment full of party stragglers and no more booze, sat crammed on the back porch between drunk boys who couldn't remember our names. swigs from a plastic bottle. conversations not worth having. yawns & bike rides home. crashed into 4 AM sleep, then woke to a blurry weekend of rain and grey, a dismal reminder of the way things can be.

laryngital love stories

i'm screaming in the middle of the library how
i want my voice back NOW but
no one even looks up from their books,
& i'm stitching ripped up bits of recycled term papers
into the lining of my coat for insulation come winter -
i don't believe in summer anymore, only
this taunting regression, like the way
you send letters from half a block away
& then pretend not to recognize me
when i catch you unawares
with yr hand on my knee. i want
to run faster than cheetah wheels with you.
& i want to kill my liver quicker so
give me one more swig of that cherry nyquil, please.

anarchy

& i guess this means i'm going at things hard enough, cuz my life is catching up to me & i like it that way. made myself sick from lack of sleep & biking tummy grumbling in the cold, from sharing drinks & cigarettes & proximities indiscriminately. bruised sides & ankles & a cut on my lip from flailing limbs the other night when the music danced & jumped & sweated its way into us, leaving us panting and joyous walking through dumb stumbly baseball fans to that party where we found ourselves drunk on good beer & new friends, spinning fire & scribbling phone numbers on hands. giant fake fur coats to hold us all three warm at the busstop, running down sidewalks falling and tackling and laughing too close. i'll bite yr fingers off but it's out of love, i promise. did i mention the next day of bike shops & explorations, scruffy anarchist singalongs while we sat crosslegged on the floor and talked about what's real? beehive collective & riot folk & hip hop. ugly is beautiful. familiar new faces. hours riding home to the library to do homework at midnight, an afterthought, not enough to make me forget my bruises & my achy legs & these songs stuck in my head. maps on my body of where i've been, maps you'd only misinterpret, my dear.

moisten

& the salt comes out slower
if you shake the shaker, dearest, & if
you stomp yr feet hard in the grass,
the trees might send down some more
fluffy seeds like snow so we can spin &
sweat & imagine it's winter.

i'm seeing everything through a veil of humidity -
you've got eyes like bogs &
fingers like seaweed & knees
made for knockin', & i think we should make out
in the library where it's tantalizingly cold
between the long disapproving
rows of darkly silent books.

are you paying attention? cuz really
what i'm trying to say is,
i'd like to give you mono.

farewell chanties

i pretended my shoes were slip-ons, and you tried to prove the world wasn't flat as a pancake. but yr eyes are cute when they crinkle up confused so i didn't tell you that it's all been done, and that raindrops are missiles from angry clouds. (you claim they're missives but i failed dictionary class so i wouldn't know which one is better), but i'm running away to go to map school and pore over books bigger than i am, glasses perched on my librarianesque nose. sucker punch to the eardrum and stretch to the ceiling. camera flashing spewing out small squares that we'll stack neatly and burn in a ceremonial display of cinnamon revival. i think we can distract the gods of running & noise if we make a stunning main dish of noodles plaintains pickle juice too. if all else fails there's always a roommate we can spare to satisfy their sacrificial cravings. anyways, back to the story. so when the ghostly trashtalker showed up past midnight he tried to bite my nose off, and i defended myself with guitar strings i'd hidden in my piles of hair. we made a fingers-crossed truce and joined the others for orgies and movie endings and i blew her kisses while i dodged yr warm-bodied advances. hands through hair. elbows and armpits and toenails. i wish you were sober so forward. i hope this isn't goodbye. what happened to florida?

no pictures, closed eyes only

& i couldn't even bring myself to take pictures cuz they feel like such closure, like such a last-ditch effort to lock memories into place on paper, to document that which i'll never have again. & he told me not to bring souvenirs away with me, but to return instead. what's the use of mementos when they could be exchanged for reality?

these nights when we sit around in the basement in the dim red light with beer bottles building up and smoke twisting, in circles or sprawled on each other, playing music, making music, showing music, laughing too hard at our nonsensical trains of thought. these boys with their open faces and easy smiles, all indiscretion & skateboards & nonchalance. "have you thanked yr hands today? think how much yr hands do for you!"

i've fallen too hard this time, fallen too hard for this city and these people and this life, and it's harder than usual to extricate myself.

this is hyperbole

since i met you i've stopped sleeping
& cut back on caffeine, i've
watched the ashes of too many cigarettes
burn down to my fingertips.
when we clasp hands together & yr face
wrinkles up into worries
you could break my heart
with those cautious eyes but
you could win me over with a pinch of
reckless disregard instead.

this morning you were still coming down, so you couldn't submit to the lure of my yawns but instead laid beside me listening to me snore and giggle in my sleep for that one short hour till i had to wake for work. if only last night's snow flurries, last night's white frozen fragments dancing thru the haloes of the streetlights, had frosted the pavement to trap me here, if only. but this morning the rain beats the cold into us, and the roads are clear, and i leave you smoking on the stoop with distance in yr eyes.

appropriation

i've got a better poker face than you when we slip juice and chocolates clandestinely into our pockets and you should really stop looking so shifty, darling. that pie crust golden brown glistening with sugar looks so inviting till we cut eagerly into it and find only the remnants of my dirty laundry - lint, dryer sheet, & all - miniaturized by that mighty machine that growls and snarls in our basement making the lights flicker and the faucets turn off for fear of offending. bake me a new one or just close yr eyes hold yr nose take a big steaming bite.

frigid

the weatherman warned of this approaching "arctic blast" but he didn't caution us against the trickeries of sunshine and blue skies making outdoors look so inviting when we skipped out to frolic and the pounding wind blew us backwards teeth chattering hopping up and down for the slightest of warmths and the old lady at the busstop took turns with me looking around the corner to watch for our ride while she showed me her songbook and we warbled hymns of uncertainty shaking fists to the sky. streets where we avoid eye contact and stare down into our scarves instead but sneak sideways glances at feet and figures. howling breezes that shout hollow nothings past my numb eardrums and rosy cheeks. we danced down aisles in the library peeking through books across shelves into stories. i read between yr lines and found a drop of confusion bursting into a puddle of inertia. when you called me three months later i didn't think of yr thick hair or yr laughing eyes but i could still picture you naked, narrow shoulders and all. impish, aren't we? sunsets aren't as beautiful when they signal the beginning of an even colder darkness, but maybe if we run out at midnight we'll catch some moonrays to warm our chilly skins. last week was springtime. winter today is frosty bike seats and not enough sweaters - winter today is a call to arms.

tendrils

gentle moss, or
soft caterpillars