jitterbug

i'll let that kiss hang in the air
for just
one
minute
more
before i forget about it,
just need to
forget
about
it.

forget about the paper lantern lips
with parchment light
because my breath is scattering
across the floor,
clacking against itself like glass beads
and i've got to collect
what i can.

i've got to claw at things like
"it'll be okay"
and minute hands
and coffee rings
and wait until your smile
and strong brow
stop making me feel like
i just
need
to
forget it.

gas station

It's August
and so all the cicadas are exhaling together.
The air is boiling above the gum-speckled asphalt,
shapeless blobs turned black from
tire-treads
and muddy boots.

It's August
and oily water leaks from grumbling trucks
muttering lazily in their torrid disgust,
forming rainbow toxic pools left to sizzle
under the globed fruit that burns
and burns in the blue.

The attendant plunks
on cash register keys with sinewy fingers,
the whorls of which are lined with
russet dirt and money soot.

These august pumps
his empire, these perspiry bodies,
his serfs.

if p, then q

what am i on the verge of here?

strange quantities of knowing and undoing the knowing,
stringy bits of information that once were the finite pieces of personality



but we are all so very limitless.




and you,
with your chasms of secrets i can only manage to catch flashes of,

one day i will figure you out and i will make sure that you know
i have every intention of drawing the hush-hush out of you
like a black and yellow humor.

the further i get,
the more apprehensive i become.

what is it, what is nestled in those umber eyes i always seem to see right through?
i can't make them give anything away,

and i'm not even sure i want them to.

L'fabuleaux destin d'moi

She was an immutable muttering,
a perpetual prattle tottering by
like a beetle on brittle stilts.

Her t-shirts and citrus-colored jumpers were
murals of quotidian stains,
stretched taut across a tawny tummy filled
with juice and Cherry Mash.

Odd and outre,
she was always glazed
in some sort of whimsy,
and she laughed during uncomfortable silences.

In a room that faced the street
where children's voices flitted by,
and the blur of their bodies
zipped by on bikes or bare feet,

the cantaloupe twilight splashes across her face.
Her eyes grew wide as she watched herself
glide in on slippered feet, her path illumed
in gossamer and violets.

Her cinnamon skin consented to
the gracious curves of her body,
fluid and fulgent as silk.
She was zaftig and rosy,
with a presence like her mother's old stills of Mae West.

Now the neighborhood grows silent
with the sleepy hush of dusk,
and the crickets twitter in the wake
of the children's fading footsteps.

Amber lamplight guides her hands
brushing through her tangled hair,
clammy fingers picking at the knots,

and she tries to count to infinity.

wish you were here

Now you're sending out pavement flavored postcards from your rear bumper and i feel the hitch of loneliness welling up like a stone in my throat.

Someone please give me the mountains again so I can sleep these days away under that cavernous umbrella of aspen trees and pink stucco.

It is not good to be alone on such a hopeless day.

monday secrets

I put myself in all the pictures of your beloved landscapes, your droll side-street cafes, your hills that stand like verdant petrified waves.

It makes me hope that if I ever get to see them, if you're ever there right next to me pointing out rue this or calle that,

it'll be like you're seeing them for the first time with me, instead of remembering who you were there with last.

In so many ways, I'm still just a girl.

Headquarters To Damage Control

What a mess
What a beautifully crafted mess,
And I'm letting it roll off of my shoulders like
Hot wax.

Your last look was a chandelier
Your words granite columns
All toppling into a landscape I trudged through,
Bare feet.

In the most sideways manner,
It was exactly what you needed.
I hacked at the tendons, the muscle, the tissue
That held you so organically to my side.

One calcified tumor,
Was it you or I?

And we'll go on existing,
Our membranes of being so separate,
Just like we were always meant to be
Before
We came careening into each other.