i dont care, i love it

I know that’s what people say — you’ll get over it. I’d say it, too. But I know it’s not true. Oh, you’ll be happy again, never fear. But you won’t forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

you got all the love honey baby I can stand

forgetting something by Nick Flynn Try this—close / your eyes. No, wait, when—if—we see each other / again the first thing we should do is close our eyes—no, / first we should tie our hands to something / solid—bedpost, doorknob— otherwise they (wild birds) / might startle us / awake. Are we forgetting something? What about that / warehouse, the one beside the airport, that room / of black boxes, a man in each box? I hear / if you bring this one into the light he will not stop / crying, if you show this one a photo of his son / his eyes go dead. Turn up / the heat, turn up the song. First thing we should do / if we see each other again is to make / a cage of our bodies—inside we can place / whatever still shines. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22250#sthash.XAW447Jk.dpuf

But it sure would be prettier with you

Brenda Shaughnessy, One Love Story, Eight Takes

       1
One version of the story is I wish you back—
that I used each evening evening out
what all day spent wrinkling.
I bought a dress that was so extravagantly feminine
you could see my ovaries through it.
This is how I thought I would seduce you.
This is how frantic I hollowed out.

                    2
Another way of telling it
is to hire some kind of gnarled
and symbolic troll to make
a tape recording.
Of plastic beads coming unglued
from a child’s jewelry box.
This might be an important sound,
like serotonin or mighty mitochondria,
so your body hears about
how you stole the ring made
from a glittery opiate
and the locket that held candy.

                    3
It’s only fair that I present yet another side,
as insidious as it is,
because two sides hold up nothing but each other.
A tentacled skepticism,
a suspended contempt,
such fancies and toxins form a third wall.
A mean way to end
and I never dreamed we meant it.

                    4
Another way of putting it is like
slathering jam on a scrape.
Do sweets soothe pain or simply make it stick?
Which is the worst! So much technology
and no fix for sticky if you can’t taste it.
I mean there’s no relief unless.
So I’m coming, all this excitement,
to your house. To a place where there’s no room for play.
It is possible you’ll lock me out and I’ll finally
focus on making mudcakes look solid in the rain.
                    5
In some cultures the story told is slightly different—
in that it is set in an aquarium and the audience participates
as various fish. The twist comes when it is revealed
that the most personally attractive fish have eyes
only on one side and repel each other like magnets.
The starfish is the size of an eraser and does as much damage.
Starfish, the eponymous and still unlikely hero, has
those five pink moving suckerpads
that allow endless permutations so no solid memory,
no recent history, nothing better, left unsaid.

                    6
The story exists even when there are no witnesses,
kissers, tellers. Because secrets secrete,
and these versions tend to be slapstick, as if in a candy
factory the chocolate belted down the conveyor too fast
or everyone turned sideways at the same time by accident.
This little tale tries so hard to be humorous,
wants so badly to win affection and to lodge.
Because nothing is truly forgotten and loved.
                    7
Three million Richards can’t be wrong.
So when they levy a critique of an undertaking which,
in their view, overtakes, I take it seriously.
They think one may start a tale off whiny
and wretched in a regular voice.
But when one strikes out whimsically,
as if meta-is-better, as if it isn’t you,
as if this story is happening to nobody
it is only who you are fooling that’s nobody.
The Richards believe you cannot
privately jettison into the sky, just for fun.
You must stack stories from the foundation up.
From the sad heart and the feet tired of supporting it.
Language is architecture, after all, not an air capsule,
not a hang glide. This is real life.
So don’t invite anyone to a house that hasn’t been built.
Because no one unbuilds meticulously
and meticulously is what allows hearing.
Three million Richards make one point.
I hear it in order to make others. Mistake.

                    8
As it turns out, there is a wrong way to tell this story.
I was wrong to tell you how muti-true everything is,
when it would be truer to say nothing.
I’ve invented so much and prevented more.
But, I’d like to talk with you about other things,
in absolute quiet. In extreme context.
To see you again, isn’t love revision?
It could have gone so many ways.
This just one of the ways it went.
Tell me another.

I want this forever, I swear I can spend whatever on it

Before you fuck up and call her anything less than her name, before you grab her by the arm you need to know the trigger that you are pulling at. You need to know that the safety is never on. You need to know her history before you tell me that this isn’t my business. You need to know that her history is my history. See, she and I, we come from the tribe of raw knuckled little girls who call our father by their first names and wear their mothers like bruise coloured war paint under eye. We grew thick skin before we grew permanent teeth. We learned to piece together our own families in the backyards of rented duplexes where we promised plastic faced babies better things in soothing tones that we mimicked from TV. We do not have daddy issues even though our daddy’s have issues. We have piercing eyes and promises to keep. We grew up to be nomads surveying domestic war zones with black eyeliner binoculars, always refusing to camouflage. We threw our heads back and laughed at oncoming explosions, never flinched, absorbing shrapnel, never let them see us cry.
We do not dream of boys who will save us from towers. We dream of boys with courage caked under their fingernails. Boys with hands rough enough to wipe metal tears from our faces but warm enough to mold them into stars. Boys with vertebrae strong enough to lock with ours so they can sleep sitting back to back with us and keep watch. And these are the boys, these are the boys who will find love under our armor. These are the boys who will find that we love selectively but we love fiercely. These are the boys who will learn that we love in ways that leave claw marks down the baseboard before we ever let go.
So do not think she doesn’t know how you fear her absence - you should. Your cage is not stronger than her will or her smile. Do not think you are good enough to tame her. You aren’t. And do not think you are the first to try because i have already closed your eyes and crossed your arms before your body hit the floor. And you think she deserves better than you. You are right. So be better than you.
Be thankful that she knows your name and be careful never to forget hers.

— Rachel Wiley

Come over to the window my little darling, I'd like to try to read your palm

—And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,
And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday—
When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,
Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon
Looking off down the long street
To nowhere,
Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation
And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why?
And if-Monday-never-had-to-come—
When you have forgotten that, I say,
And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,
And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;
And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,
That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner
To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles
Or chicken and rice
And salad and rye bread and tea
And chocolate chip cookies—
I say, when you have forgotten that,
When you have forgotten my little presentiment
That the war would be over before they got to you;
And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,
And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end
Bright bedclothes,
Then gently folded into each other—
When you have, I say, forgotten all that,
Then you may tell,
Then I may believe
You have forgotten me well.

-Gwendolyn Brooks, when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story

And I'll pretend that everybody here wants peace

What It’s All About | Denise Duhamel

I put the pop­corn in my mouth
one ker­nel at a time
because I was afraid the beige pol­ish
had yet to dry on my soft nails
that bent to and fro when they grew
too long. The nails I once used as shov­els
in the sand­box, that peeled the skin
of my sister’s fad­ing tan. I tried to get
the biggest flakes off her back, the biggest rips
before they split. She thought this strip­ping
a gross task, but I loved get­ting to the under­neath,
her new melon skin, a sur­prise
like lip­stick. Though I was too young
to wear it, I obsessed about the twist
of the tube like a pen twirl to get at the ink
or like paper curl­ing away
from the crayon to get more of the pink.
When Alfie said, “If you lose a bird
you can always replace her,” I was con­fused.
I knew he was wrong, but he said it
so assured as I blew on my nails
mak­ing sure they weren’t speck­led with salt.
I thought: well, if I lose a boy, I can always
replace him. I knew I was wrong, too,
as I sat in that front-row plush seat,
but still I decided I should try to be the kind of girl
who could write “good­bye” with Revlon
on a bath­room mir­ror and fly out the window.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Heather Aimee O’Neill, “Mars May Have Been a Land of Lakes”

Let’s begin by deciding what it is
we’re trying to define. You’re
impossible. That’s what I’ve decided,
that’s how I’ve defined you.

Nature has a way of compensating.
As a blonde, I should have 38,000 more
strands of hair on my head than my
brunette sister, my redhead brother.

You found one on your pillow
and, hours after I left, called to see
if I wanted it back. An eyelash,
you would have kept for yourself.

Mars may have been a land of lakes,
but the satellite orbits us, and the photos
cannot reveal such distant history.
And why should they? We can’t

even be honest with each other,
let alone believe the billion years
it took for us to happen: first water,
then body, voice and faith.

She's seeking out the places, those other people can't go

People Like Us - Jessica Piazza

1.
Remade again, we make the same mistakes again:
unthinking love like insects lustfully swerving loops.
Like most girls, I stoke mental midnight barbeques—
destroy incriminating artifacts, defend,
absolve the most foregonely inconclusive men.
By day I play nonstop if/then, internally pluck
a love me, love me not lament. And when
he goes, I go too far; turn hard. I bolt the locks
behind him, one by one. But always when he comes
I weave a line from gauze, thin thread for him to climb
from her to me once more, decision time
delayed again. He can’t be sure. I’m sure I’ve done
things wrong. But he attracted me; it happened, still.
And now our love’s not whether, but how long until.

2.
It isn’t whether. No. Only: how long until
how bad it gets. Our quick, our clutch. Or, sluggish rift.
How costly this, a wished subletting of the heart.
Not mine to squat in; he’s not mine (it’s fine). But still:
that sock-to-the-stomach, sudden hollow Ugh! You see
the ante? I’m already un and raveling;
this scanty hope swan-songing my integrity.
(But maybe, also, just a little, reveling?
Piñata pricked, unpilfered? Tamed tsunami swell?
An overflowing loving cup?) Tut, tut! Too cursed.
Too much. I won’t allow it. Silly, sad, or worse:
tonight I’ll disavow these high-jinks, hurts, these hells.
(I will? I might.) I must. Such surefire track to lack,
a certain fade to black . . . . Oh fuck it. Holler back.

3.
Drawn curtain: faded, black. We fucked. We hollered. Back-
tracked and let sunlight in. Repeated. Weekended
in secret. Got outed. Paused. Rebounded. Tended
belabored hearts, but badly. Madly loved. Attacked
covertly. Wept explicitly. Like sailors pressed
to duty on a ship, we gauged our endless trip
in knots; threw cannonballs of angry nots, then stripped
our decks with unexpected yeses. Reaped such bless-
ings, only to blaspheme them. Wars, then truces: meant
them. Didn’t mean them. Lost him and redeemed him. Pleased
him. Keened. Appeased no one. Repeated. When he ceased
his meanness, I retreated. Wanted, but discounted
what I needed. Didn’t know I ended when
this first began. But I would do it all again.

4.
When this began, I knew I’d do it. Fall again,
do wrong again. Born into debt, I know I owe
for every weapon, every word. Each lie, each sin,
each deed a bead that slides along a wire in rows,
internal abacus to tally each offense.
Together, we hurt everything we touch; apart,
ourselves. How do we choose? At some point, counterpoint
is pointless—only voices voicing dissonance.
Our bodies: losing arguments we enter in-
to too relentlessly, astride a fence we see
can’t pen us endlessly. We’ll pay eventually.
Your stroke, your fingers at my throat, the paraffin
that I become: we are both crime and smoking gun.
And we’ll continue hiding it from everyone.

5.
We can’t continue hiding. Almost everyone
is hiding; almost everyone is getting caught.
Distraught, we fight. We keep our shutter-eyelids shut
against the doormat-sleeping days we know will come.
And every winsome man’s like you—an eyelash shy
of possible. And every frantic woman wants
to get to the heart of a fleeing, wing-beating heart.
People like us: we’re dust, we’re everywhere. We lie
in spaces between places praying madly for
each other, staying mad at one another, hot
because we’re bothered. Chasing careless fathers or
neglectful mothers. Listen well: I love you, but
it’s over. The inevitable mess we’ve been,
unmade again. Mistake I’ll never make again.


Original appearance in No Tell Motel.

Bring it on home to me

Elsa, IT’S OKAY. CRYING On The Bathroom Floor Is

Elsa, IT’S OKAY. CRYING on the bath-
room floor is a RIGHT of passage. You will
PRESS YOUR CHEEK against the bathroom tile and
find comfort in that irony. You will REPLAY THE
THINGS he said to you in those first 2 weeks
of dating. You will REMEMBER YOUR PLANS
to go to ———— together. IT WILL
FEEL like a condom on your heart. You
will DO THIS at least 17 times be-
fore you turn 35. EVERY TIME hurt-
ing will be different. You will EAT ONLY
WAFFLES and hope you lose twelve pounds. This is
a ritual YOU WILL CALL HEARTBREAK.
IT WILL DESTROY YOU LIKE NOTHING ELSE COULD.

You can be addicted to a certain kind of sadness

'Patagonia' by Kate Clanchy

I said perhaps Patagonia, and pictured
a peninsula, wide enough
for a couple of ladderback chairs
to wobble on at high tide. I thought

of us in breathless cold, facing
a horizon round as a coin, looped
in a cat’s cradle strung by gulls
from sea to sun. I planned to wait

till the waves had bored themselves
to sleep, till the last clinging barnacles,
growing worried in the hush,
had paddled off in tiny coracles, till

those restless birds, your actor’s hands,
had dropped slack into your lap,
until you’d turned, at last, to me.
When I spoke of Patagonia, I meant

skies all empty aching blue. I meant
years. I meant all of them with you.