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.