(via hereshe)
I want to be
in Texas, asleep
in the passenger seat of your
nineteen seventy-two sky-blue
Cadillac, the windscreen hypnotized
by horizon, the rear-view
by your eyes, their roan-brown
focus, the careless
freckles on your cheeks,
the breeze sight-reading
a scarred bass clef,
your left hand in your curls,
your bare foot on the gas,
your skin resonant
with fading light, Nina Simone
on the radio and the rain
starting warm on my arm, the way
you play piano, scattering
a handful of dice
on a wood surface,
every note, one side
of five silences.
Warren Heiti “Untitled” (via atomiclanterns)
Love in the Country
We live like this: no one but
some of the owls awake, and of them
only near ones really awake.
In the rain yesterday, puddles
on the walk to the barn sounded their
quick little drinks.
The edge of the haymow, all
soaked in moonlight,
dreams out there like silver music.
Are there farms like this where
no one likes to live?
And the sky going everywhere?
While the earth breaks the soft horizon
eastward, we study how to deserve
what has already been given us.
(via babybirch)
Wherever You Are
When I kissed you in the hall
of the youth hostel we fell
into the linen closet laughing
twenty years ago and I still
remember though not very often
the taste of cheap wine in your mouth
like raspberries the freckle
between your breasts and the next day
when we went to Versailles I hardly
saw anything because I was looking
at you the whole time your face I can’t
quite remember then I kissed you
good-bye and you got on a train
and I never saw you again just
one day and one letter long gone
explaining never mind but sometimes
I wonder where you are probably
married with children like me happy
with a new last name a whole life
having nothing to do with that day
but everybody has something like it
a small thing they can’t help
going back to and it’s not even about
choices and where your life might
have gone but just that it’s there
far enough away so it can be seen
as just something that happened almost
to someone else an episode from
a movie we walk out of blinded
back into our lives
Jeffrey Harrison
(via rabbit-light)
from “Blue Yodel of the Desperado”
I went to New York to leave you
Flowers of blood and light
In the Picture Shows I dreamed
Of your birthmark in the shape of a pistol
There you were alone and asleep
In your bed like a lake
And your Father watched over you
And his land
As always you slept naked
With the windows wide open
The down on the small of your back
Was like dust on the guitar
Holding up the pane
I believe you left strawberries
And a glass of water
Untouched on the desk
There were ashes hidden in your drawers
And your fingers smelled like backwater…
I wanted to ride down to where I come from
On an appaloosa
And take you away for good
I wanted to tie your hands with my belt
And watch you stare at the campfire
In the mountains not saying a word
So it was in this dream
I gave you things to eat
So you would speak to me
I watched you grow silent and hungry
Like the middle of the night…
The first time you wept like a wooden boat
Was just launched
The sounds of the night…
At dawn you said you were thirsty
Even the darkest night must give in
When you spoke
It was hard for me to say a word
I couldn’t open my mouth
It was like being underwater
A bird came from nowhere
And lighted on your wrist
In the dream it drank from your palm
You stroked its throat and I could have sworn
Your finger was on the trigger
The wind came up you looked away
You were always cold…
When luck and money ran out
I deserted you somewhere in South America…
And stowed away on the first rig I saw
A ship full of wild horses
bound for America
I hid below with the animals that were
To be broken at sea
More than once I put my teeth to the tapaderas
Hunting the musk of your white feet…
I had nightmares about the vessel
Going down with the horses…
My sleep was like a long swim…
I dreamed they brought you aboard
To commend you to the sea
I dreamed you rode off to your wedding sidesaddle
And the only thing you let between your legs
Was the melancholy blood of the cello
You with your instinct for music and danger
Always without escort…
(via ahuntersheart)
Cephalopodic
Within the body of water,
other bodies of water.
It cossets her, one tentacle
and then more.
Behind each suction cup,
a blue mark: half moon, star,
and a night sky
it only knows from rumor.
Awkwardness,
though it is governed by fluidity.
It sees farther out than she,
into tide and current, guarding.
It thinks to return her to the surface,
but with each slip across her skin,
she says, “Stay.”
It cannot sleep anymore—
too many visions
of fishhooks and cleavers.
Her back curves in to it.
They are buoyant,
and it is wild eyed:
when has it been loved like this?
It would live in her world—
bathtubbed. But she says,
“Stay here in the sea.”
It wants to be her diving bell,
surround her in pocketed air,
but she will kick to the surface.
They drift in and out
of their domains,
air and water exchanges.
She moves her home to the edge.
It stays close as the surf will allow.
(via seafoamwaltz)
Circles, Ryan Teitman
Let what begins
continue. Let
your dog turn
up his nose at
the plate of vegetables
you delicately
smashed on the floor.
How far are we now
from the place
they sealed the boy
inside the well
when they couldn’t
figure out how
to save him?
They didn’t want to
hear his cries anymore.
So they boarded up
the mouth and continued
with the picnic,
even as their children
grew wet with rain.
This summer,
tornadoes will
circle our town,
a runaway will
circle her final
destination on a map,
and dogs will
stalk circles around
a wounded deer.
I couldn’t tell
you how to dress
that leg. You’ve never
been alone before,
but I forget that
sometimes. I know
how to make bandages
from bedsheets;
my grandmother told me
stories from the war,
how her garden was
full of scrap metal,
how she served tomatoes
dressed in oil and rust,
yet sweeter than before.
She’d say, let what begins
continue, and gesture
vaguely at the sky,
as if the sky was where
everything happened.
This is the prerogative of childhood: to move in complete freedom between magic and oatmeal porridge, between boundless terror and joy that threatens to burst within you. There were no limits except forbidden things and rules, which were like shadows, mostly unfathomable. I know, for instance, that I could not grasp the concept of time: You must learn to be punctual; you have been given a watch, you must learn how to tell time. Yet time did not exist. I was late for school, I was late for meals. Unconcerned, I roamed around in the park by the hospital, looking around and dreaming; time ceased to exist, then something reminded me I was hungry, and trouble began.
It was difficult for me to differentiate between what existed in my imagination and what was real. If I made the effort, perhaps I could make the reality remain real, but then, for instance, there were always the ghosts and the visions. What was I supposed to do with them? And the fairy tales, were they real or not?
Late Poem
” … a matter of changing a slide in a magic lantern.”
I wish we were Indians and ate foie gras
and drove a gas-guzzler
and never wore seat belts
I’d have a baby, yours, cette fois,
and I’d smoke Parliaments
and we’d drink our way through the winter
in spring the baby would laugh at the moon
who is her father and her mother who is his pool
and we’d walk backwards and forwards
in lizard-skin cowboy boots
and read Gilgamesh and Tintin aloud
I’d wear only leather or feathers
plucked from endangered birds and silk
from exploited silkworms
we’d read The Economist
it would be before and after the internet
I’d send you letters by carrier pigeons
who would only fly from one window
to another in our drafty, gigantic house
with twenty-three uninsulated windows
and the dog would be always be
off his leash and always
find his way home as we will one day
and we’d feed small children
peanut butter and coffee in their milk
and I’d keep my hand glued under your belt
even while driving and cooking
and no one would have our number
except I would have yours where I’ve kept it
carved on the sole of my stiletto
which I would always wear when we walked
in the frozen and dusty wood
and we would keep warm by bickering
and falling into bed perpetually and
entirely unsafely as all the best things are
—your skin and my breath on it.
Cynthia Zarin
