Up on a hill across the blue lake, that's where I had my first heartbreak

In the Beginning // Chad deNiord We lived in bed, no matter where we went or what we did; we were always there, pulling the sheets up over our heads like souls for whom bodies are gowns that weigh too much, pressing ourselves so close to each other we felt our skin cross over to bone. How many days did we dream like this in our high stone room to which we'd flown on the wings of little deaths? We slept awake and woke asleep in a fire we couldn’t put out; in a fire that burned from the inside out. What did we know without saying? That we would suffer the weight we lost without even trying when we returned, then walk like turtles on the beach? How fast do you think we said "Yes! Yes!" to the poor first god when he asked us twice in separate rooms, "Are you sure about this?" So fast, I can tell you, that the birds outside our broken window thought we were singing a song only they remembered.

Fuck a fake friend, where you real friends at

The First Straw I used to think love was two people sucking on the same straw to see whose thirst was stronger, but then I whiffed the crushed walnuts of your nape, traced jackals in the snow-covered tombstones of your teeth. I used to think love was a non-stop saxophone solo in the lungs, till I hung with you like a pair of sneakers from a phone line, and you promised to always smell the rose in my kerosene. I used to think love was terminal pelvic ballet, till you let me jog beside while you pedaled all over hell on the menstrual bicycle, your tongue ripping through my prairie like a tornado of paper cuts. I used to think love was an old man smashing a mirror over his knee, till you helped me carry the barbell of my spirit back up the stairs after my car pirouetted in the desert. You are my history book. I used to not believe in fairy tales till I played the dunce in sheep’s clothing and felt how perfectly your foot fit in the glass slipper of my ass. But then duty wrapped its phone cord around my ankle and yanked me across the continent. And now there are three thousand miles between the u and the s in esophagus. And being without you is like standing at a cement-filled well with a roll of Yugoslavian nickels and making a wish. Some days I miss you so much I’d jump off the roof of your office building just to catch a glimpse of you on the way down. I wish we could trade left eyeballs, so we could always see what the others see. But you’re here, I’m there, and we have only words, a nightly phone call — one chance to mix feelings into syllables and pour into the receiver, hope they don’t disassemble in that calculus of wire. And lately — with this whole war thing — the language machine supporting it — I feel betrayed by the alphabet, like they’re injecting strychnine into my vowels, infecting my consonants, naming attack helicopters after shattered Indian tribes: Apache, Blackhawk; and West Bank colonizers are settlers, so Sharon is Davey Crockett, and Arafat: Geronimo, and it’s the Wild West all over again. And I imagine Picasso looking in a mirror, decorating his face in war paint, washing his brushes in venom, and I think of Jenin in all that rubble, and I feel like a Cyclops with two eyes, like an anorexic with three mouths, like a scuba diver in quicksand, like a shark with plastic vampire teeth, like I’m the executioner’s fingernail trying to reason with the hand. And I don’t know how to speak love when the heart is a busted cup filling with spit and paste, and the only sexual fantasy I have is busting into the Pentagon with a bazooka-sized pen and blowing open the minds of generals. And I comfort myself with the thought that we’ll name our first child Jenin, and her middle name will be Terezin, and we’ll teach her how to glow in the dark, and how to swallow firecrackers, and to never neglect the first straw, because no one ever talks about the first straw, it’s always the last straw that gets all the attention, but by then it’s way too late. - Jeffrey McDaniel

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.

believe me, believe me, believe me the blue sky will smother us

“Each From Different Heights” by Stephen Dunn

That time I thought I was in love
and calmly said so
was not much different from the time
I was truly in love
and slept poorly and spoke out loud
to the wall
and discovered the hidden genius
of my hands
And the times I felt less in love,
less than someone,
were, to be honest, not so different
either.
Each was ridiculous in its own way
and each was tender, yes,
sometimes even the false is tender.
I am astonished
by the various kisses we’re capable of.
Each from different heights
diminished, which is simply the law.
And the big bruise
from the long fall looked perfectly white
in a few years.
That astounded me most of all.

Poem: "The God Who Loves You" by Carl Dennis

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen. 

It may be hot out here but I can't see a cloud for miles

 We Were Emergencies By: Buddy Wakefield

 

We can stick anything into the fog and make it look like a ghost.

But tonight let us not become tragedies.

We are not funeral homes

with propane tanks in our windows

lookin’ like cemeteries.

Cemeteries are just the Earth’s way of not letting go.

Let go.

Tonight, poets, let’s turn our wrists so far backwards

the razor blades in our pencil tips

can’t get a good angle on all that beauty inside.

Step into this.

With your airplane parts.

Move forward.

And repeat after me with your heart:

I no longer need you to fuck me as hard as I hated myself.

Make love to me

like you know I am better than the worst thing I ever did.

Go slow.

I’m new to this,

but I have seen nearly every city from a rooftop

without jumping.

I have realized that the moon

did not have to be full for us to love it.

That we are not tragedies

stranded here beneath it.

That if our hearts

really broke

every time we fell from love

I’d be able to offer you confetti by now.

But hearts don’t break, y’all,

they bruise and get better.

We were never tragedies.

We were emergencies.

You call 9 – 1 – 1.

Tell them I’m havin’ a fantastic time.

And all day long we talk about Mercy

Maggie and Milly and Molly and May

            maggie and milly and molly and may
            went down to the beach(to play one day)

            and maggie discovered a shell that sang
            so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

            milly befriended a stranded star
            whose rays five languid fingers were;

            and molly was chased by a horrible thing
            which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

            may came home with a smooth round stone
            as small as a world and as large as alone.

            For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
            it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Selected Poems
E.E. Cummings

Litany


"You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine..."
- Jaques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.

You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.

There is just no way you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close

to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner

nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,

that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,

and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow-- the wine.

This is an old song, these are old blues

LESTER, BURMA
by: Jesse Bell

For J.Z.

Lester and Burma were speaking gaily. He had encountered her in the hallway. Hello, he said, you certainly are a sight for sore eyes. They proceeded to a room adjoining that hall, where a large window opened onto the street. I would like to have you for supper, said Burma, and took off her dress.

I am appalled, said the doorman to the coachman, and the coachman to the gardener, at the way the young lady dosports herself. You would think she had been brought up better than that.

Burma was wearing no underwear, and her slender body looked very nice on Lester's sofa. He said so. Thank you, said Burma. I swim each day, and use fine oils. Of course you do, said Lester.

What will happen, said Lester's father to Lester's mother, when that boy gets to the big city? Who will he fall in with? Will he return in ten years' time and shower us with gifts and rememberance? Or will he, said Lester's father to Lester's sickly uncle, die from the plague like all his cousins? Perhaps he will take to the sea and become a privateer, with a letter of marque. I would like that, said the uncle. I would like that also, said Lester's father.

A cloud of bees overtook the window and screened the room for a minute. Do you think they'll harm us? asked Lester. Why, no, said Burma, they're just curious. Aren't you ever curious? Yes, quite, said Lester, laying his hand upon her thigh.

The beekeeper paused by his hives. A cloud of bees is missing, he said, to no one in particular. I hpe the little creatures aren't up to any mischief. I hope they return by dark so I can tuck them in their little beds and read them fairy tales.

At any rate, said Lester, we might at least have a look in the bedroom and see what's going on in there. Yes, said Burma, we might at least do that. Just to know for sure. The bedroom door closed softly behind them.

And when the bees returned to their hive, the beekeeper was there with glad tears and an admonishing word. He read them a story from a fine book he'd just bought, in which a boy and girl go to bed together with no other reason than that it is nice to be in bed with a boy and it is nice to be in bed with a girl and it is nice to wake up midway through a life in early evening to the buzzing of bees in an adjoining room

the wonder that holds the stars apart

seamless_Meagan Brothers
Like a broken compass,
I don't know whether you're pushing me away
or pulling me towards.
You seemed so alive then,
so soft and dark
and quiet inside your skeleton.
I never knew how to be still like that.
I wrote your words on my arms,
but I was too clean to get dirty.
 I got skinny,
 but I was too hungry to starve.
The words are pungent and broken on my belly,
but they are alive,
because sometimes you speak to me this way,
with touches and tattoos,
in whispers and shouts
while my hair grows out,
and I remember that you were
broken once, too.
I'm okay, though,
I'm fixed,
you've glued me back
and there are no cracks in sight,
just this
seamless whisper
of your hands
on my shoulders
pushing me or pulling me
in every direction
of you.

When streams are ripe and swelled with rain

Collecting again, a few this time:

DOMESTIC SITUATION | ERNEST HILBERT

Maybe you’ve heard about this. Maybe not.
A man came home and chucked his girlfriend’s cat
In the wood chipper. This really happened.
Dinner wasn’t ready on time. A lot
Of other little things went wrong. He spat
On her father, who came out when he learned
About it. He also broke her pinky,
Stole her checks, and got her sister pregnant.
But she stood by him, stood strong, through it all,
Because she loved him. She loved him, you see.
She actually said that, and then she went
And married him. She felt some unique call.
Don’t try to understand what another
Person means by love. Don’t even bother.


A Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You
by Jon Sands

When I said I wasn’t with another girl
the January after we fell in love for the 3rd time,
it’s because it wasn’t actual sex.

In the February that began our radio silence,
it was actual sex. I hate the tight shirts
that go below your waistline.

Not only do they make you look too young,
but then your torso is a giraffe’s neck attached to tiny legs.
I screamed at myself in the subway

for writing poems about you still.
I made a scene. I think about you almost
each morning, and roughly every five days, I still

believe you’re there.
I still masturbate to you.
When we got really bad,

I would put another coat of mop water on the floor of the bar
to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed.
You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing

I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck
wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in.
I remember when you said being with me

is like being alone with company.
My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies.
I’m scared you’re my pink pony.

Hers is dead. It is really sad. You’re not dead.
You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever.
You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls.

I have a growing queue of things I know
will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them.
I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay,

I would not have said no.
It would never mean yes.

I just want a moment of truth so vast...

Ground Zero // David Lerner

whenever I say things like
"poetry is a lethal weapon"

my friends get nervous

I can't really blame them

they've visted me in
enough loony bins and dryouts
to know that

the line I walk between
image and fact

is sometimes thin indeed

I've fought my share of battles where
the only blood spilled
was inside my head...

Brecht said
he didn't write his plays
to warm the cockles of the bourgeois heart

now he was bragging, but

what with freebase, croissants, all-talk radio and
credit card blow jobs

we're already entertained to death...

and when I say things like
"poetry's a war"

my friends look at me careful
and measure the whites of my eyes
against the blue of my nerves
and sigh

hopefully poised for ironic topspin

but ready to call my doctor
in the middle of the
night

I stare back at them blank-eyed

just because I'm crazy
doesn't mean I
don't make sense

if I sometimes tilt at windmills
head first

it's probably because
I need a new head...

and when they ask why
I say how

when they ask how
I say when

and when I say when
they say

"But I have to go to the doctor
that week"

or, "I'm busy with my dogs"

or, "I'd rather eat Chinese"

or

it sounds good on paper
but what's in it for me

Nothing, I reply

nothing at all

except a chance to drink fire from a glass
and spit it back in some asshole's face

nothing but a license to
chase the Devil around the block
with a big blue sword
that is sharper than his horns

nothing I can run down in a heartbeat
or prove with math

but I cross my soul and
swear to kill

if I'm lying...

the world can eat itself alive
for another 1000 years
for all I care

I was never much good at
abstract compassion

I just want a moment of truth
so vast

that all the lights on the planet
dim for a second...

we're right at ground zero
the times are suffused with murder
perfect with disbelief

and I say

take an emotion
and file it to a point
with everything you have and haven't

shoot it through the laser
that beats in our bones

turn the sound up
way past 10
and don't sweat the distortion...

and who knows

perhaps one day we'll come to
a fine and deadly pleasure

one free breath