Category: Poetry

Tonight,  no one is singing
“we are lawrence brewer”
because it’s okay
for the State to kill a racist. 

Let’s toast
to the man who
will die in a high-profile
execution, and drink
to forget the man who
died after a high-profile
crime. 

i noted the size of your hand,
small, with unevenly bitten and manicured nails,
and i could almost smell your perfume over the ocean—

i could almost tell it about you.
how is it that it’s written on us before
we even know it ourselves? how is it
that no one is surprised,
(but still there is room
for others to be outraged.
and oh!, here. here!
of all places!)

so let’s leave longings to the imagination
and sigh, only, through a furtive glance
delivered in no direction at all.

Lovers, when in love, trace lies on each others’ bodies,
and we are no different, using our tongues soft and sweet
to write reminders, like you are—forearm, neck, breast—a notebook
allow yourself to remember memories we created of
conversations we misremembered from the moments we lived them
find yourselves in the stories i wrote by making you weak until
you were malleable like clay softened by the wetness of my tongue
remember the tension of my fingers as i shaped us into a story
go ahead, hold your skin to the light and read what is written
the words will glisten though now crossed out, an addendum
from a woman i’ve never met—a parenthetical exploit—
you can still cringe despite the numbness i left with you

and when i see you, the flavors i crave seem unfamiliar
different from the memories i wrote and rewrote in days that passed us
the words i’ve been trapping between my teeth
are not the lies we labelled them. it is truth
that forks my tongue and makes me dangerous. i grit my teeth
as i arch my back to search for the false words i know you wrote.

this song reminds me of that cold night
on the floor so wet from snow
and the smell of that couch in the garage
(or maybe it is the smell of your jacket)
where I first found you because I wanted to find you there
and the taste of the smoothies she and i bought
to cover up the taste of alcohol on our breath
and the feeling of the cool breeze I used
to calm the guilt on my conscience

I told the story of us, today,
to myself in a store
as I read a short story
and thought about identity.
I told the story of us, today,
to my hands as I tested
lotion just because I
already knew I like it.
I told the story of us, today,
and I left out every good part
except for one night
with many kisses.
I told the story of us, today,
and then, I wound it up
again and put it away.

I am not the girl that
collapses in a hallway
because I am surprised
to see you.  I am not or
I never was.

Isn’t it a funny that the same songs
played too loudly
at fifteen
calm a new spring
of flowing tears at twenty-three (I
can’t wait to be twenty-four, at
least that’s a number I can memorize
and in a few months, I won’t need to
count the long way on my fingers
the distance between 1986 and 2001).

Saturday nights can be so,
so violent.

At twenty-three, just as fifteen,
I find myself the only adult, the only
reasonable person in a kitchen full
of children.  Children grown and
resentful.  Strong willed and wild
with the new elixir that stops
the shaking in their hands that
started one morning they cannot remember.

Tomorrow morning,
they cannot remember.

And the flashbacks to this memory
leave me stubborn.  Unwilling.
On some sort of self-inflicted bed
rest.  I can’t focus.  I can’t
even have the conversation. And
I will require years of
manufactured microdrama to avoid
any mention of these details.

I guess in this respect I am lucky.
Your meanness, it turns out, is not
a byproduct of alcohol.  And I am
still smart only by books, intelligence
unearned and lacking life experience.
As though you did not hand me the life
experience on so many similar nights,

I am still the entitled bitch
I was (three fingers and
one fully extended hand ago).