sidelong

and it was that protest on the lawn, radical cheerleaders and drums and dancing and running excitedly between people i knew till hand on my back he whispered in my ear, will you slow dance with me? and it was crawling out windows to rooftop gardens and lavender between my fingers. can i ask you dirty questions? knees touching around bike repairs.

and it was long lazy bike rides in the cool dusk breezes down narrow unlit streets with me swaying perched behind the seat flapping my arms like wings while we wobbled around turns. first kisses against newspaper machines outside shuttered restaurants and grabbing hands tight. he's not ready for this but he'd be a fool to let go of my hand right now.

what's yr favorite color, where's yr history, and tell me, what's yr sign? what a way to fall asleep and what a way to wake up. & mugs of tea too bitter and morning glories blooming purple and hummingbirds in the sunshine, and he asks, one day when yr done being wild and carefree will you come back to me?

(but i remind him that without both of our imminent looming departures none of this would taste as sweet)

and it was only one night, and i could have been anyone, don't you think?
but still yr stuck in my head.

chicago incarnations

these are signs that i'm ready for a break. flying home tomorrow morning (no liquids on the plane! take yr shoes off and sneak yr dirty hair thru security without arousing suspicion!) will be such a welcome escape for a week before i'm back in this city again.

i'm not sure i like this latest revision, all sneers and slipknots and sleepy condescension, and i'm not sure i'm really better off with these x-ray eyes and illiterate agenda and impatience like toenails. i kind of want to go back to bare feet and smoldering wicks and petals stuck in my hair and my teeth. i kind of want to be scared of anyone at all again, scared into pewter poses and bashful paper airplanes.

(the bookstore floor is a-calling, and you never really have to buy.)

momentum

and sometimes the inclinations leave me. sometimes
i can only work in the mornings
toward afternoon deadlines creeping closer
sidling up seeming so sneaky and slow but
ready to slam into me like that
almost-collision yesterday -

you know, two objects in motion going
faster faster faster intent on their destinations,
two objects on convergent paths
will necessarily collide with a great deal of force
leaving a mess of me and you and we
unless we swerve! just in time.

momentum, all about momentum, and
you know, if i never stop i never have to
start up again cuz i know an object at rest will
stay at rest but an object in motion will just
go go go, and i don't think i need to explain
the manifest metaphors here.

muggy

and i'm so used to running off of adrenaline & caffeine & sheer will that now my body is cautious about returning to sleep and proper nutrition, suspicious about my motivations. & my bike is chipping pink onto my helmet and onto everything i lean it against, just like my hair fades pink onto my shoulders and onto yr pillow if you let me stay over. & the morton salt girl is doing her dance up above while the cars are trying to cut me off down below, and yr all so angry, so angry like you've forgotten the color of diversion and the taste of mud between yr toes. & i think i absorb assimilate agree too easily cuz we've been spending too much time together and suddenly i want to revert & return to my own particular eardrums. you know how it is. the streetlights never turn off and every car has to peel out at every light and the fans aren't enough to keep us from sweating, but we embrace this damp air cuz it's that zillion times inevitability, that hot breath on our faces and down our backs while we wince and fidget and roll our eyes. i saw them both look up at once with the same expression and i couldn't help but smirk at our mindless murky mirroring. i wonder if you knew it was a mistake.

artificial vanilla flavor

my skin is getting brown and my hair is getting long and i hardly think you'd recognize me, though i haven't changed at all. i'm carving songs of reversal onto the ceiling and reading between the blades of the fan while the walls swell and creak and sweat and the wind knocks the my cigarettes from the sill, scattering toasty tobacco thru my twisted sheets. there's bike wheels stacked in the living room and pink hair dye staining the sink, and we only cross paths bleary-eyed and half-dressed, leaving latenight showers or leaning over sleepy breakfasts before dashing off again. i'm considering a fling with that one in the tight pants and spiky hair (let's fling each other around and apart), the one who feigns aloofness. i've no patience for remainders. i'm a blackboard with too many smudges and i just switched back to my old pair of shoes, the ones that stayed dry all rainy winter. it's a thirsty deluge and a sweaty t-shirt and a pile of books we meant to read ages ago. crack open that dictionary and start again.

flight

So I think I may have finally learned how to fly, after years spent dreaming on rooftops and sending my soul up with puffs of wintry breath aimed towards the stars, after so many nights of practice takeoffs with an engine and a gearshift standing in for wings, under the moon with my headlights off, around curves and down hills singing and sighing through endless restless hours.

You see all along the secret lay in discovering how to plant my own two feet firmly on the earth, in not trying to leap till i knew my point of departure by heart. sometimes you have to hold on to learn how to let go. And it seems appropriate that it's Independence Day today, because suddenly i'm free from the laws of gravity.

Tonight I took off slowly with the weights of the daytime holding me down, with one foot on a pedal and the other on a curb, eyes tired & chest tight. Tonight my knees creaked and my bangs blew in my face and i swooped and soared through this city so big and so small, so close. Climbing to peaks of bridges so reminiscent of other towns (of other lifetimes) while the fireworks shot into the sky on every side and I think I shot up there with them too; I think my feet are miles above the asphalt and I'm liking the view.

this is summer, and this is subtraction

shakin fists, shakin hair, shakin bodies crammed into spaces too small and too close to the music till we're dripping sweat off our knees our chins our bangs and then running drenched out into the slightly cooler night to ride home running red lights and speeding down dark lakeside trails in the pulsing breathing night.

and later when i stumble into long quiet solo routes home, practicing riding with no hands or maybe just with no distractions, i tend to start to think too hard and wish too hard and try and will you back to me, all of you, each one who's made me shivery & giddy & lost, damn you.

summer is finally here and it's clinging to my skin and hovering above the sidewalks, making night seem too inviting in its cool endless emptiness, making me forget how soon morning comes back around.

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.