Walls

This is a short work of fiction, written in a stanza format, 
but it is meant to be read as a prose piece.
Enjoy.


And she looked across the desk,
at his hands, moving the pen
in strange lines she could not
translate. 
His head was down, reading,
his hands moving; always.


To reach out and to silence
the noise from those hands,
to make them content.
It was all she ever wanted.


Across the desk she was safe,
a grey formica sea making
boundaries of the safety type.
This desk was the caution tape
to her crime scene.


Because from across these
boundaries, oh the state lines
impenetrable- oh, the Berlin Wall
insurmountable- from this distance
she could watch
with steady gaze, subtle
because he could not see her.
He was engrossed in words,
and she was engrossed with
the moving tics
of his hands.


There was a rhythm needing
to be quieted. To be fulfilled.
She deduced this much in her
mind from across the mountain range
between them.


It kept her hands
from wandering over across the
socially constructed white paper
to his hands,
to grab them and make them be still.


She was stifled in the silences,
which stretched long and slow
like dirty rivers. Chock full of 
weird unknown nouns he was 
trying to conjure up. 
Full of toxic waste the two 
created in this caustic sense
of closeness with
the impenetrable distance
of this goddamned 
fucking table.


He read and it was agonizing,
the movement of his hands.
The soft formation of
dead words on his lips.
The motion so softened
by pink mouthy flesh
it came out not as words
but as shocking silence
that clouded the air
above his bent head.


In her stifled state
on the other side,
in the plastic chairs
she hated and stuck to in the
muggy heat, 
she made herself a perfect
statue. Still in a way inhuman,
only found in stiff royal paintings-
the kind with starched white collars.


For moving made noises
and broke the disgustingly sacred
space of nothing, 
the zero decibel hum
of their two minds 
on opposite sides
of a muddy river.


His stupid hands
would not cease their
confounded motions,
flicking a pen and navigating
broken words,
and making maps of
almost-cities 
as his fingers grasped and
squeezed and moved the air.


What the hell,
she wanted to ask,
why do you move so much,
and what on earth are you thinking?


But luckily enough, her mouth 
was shut and her hands folded
because of the brick wall that was
this desk.


And in these moments
there was a weird loss of time,
the clock in this room always
wrong in hours and minutes,
and time being something fake
and forged anyways-


but nevertheless, a long
space grew here and was cultivated
by fingers movement and small quiet
puffs of respiration.


And it was enough that she
imagined Reagan in her mind
as he said "Mr. Gorbachev,
tear down this wall!"
And in a flying leap
of bravery and 
rash foolishness 
she cleared the wall
(world-champion pole-vaulter, 
as she was not)
and reached 
across what was all of space
and time and humanity
and nothingness.


And she silenced his
perpetual motion.
Her hand 
fell soft and nervous
on his, and she looked 
and parted her mouth as to 
speak- but the look she received
from this hiatus of movement
and the breaking down of walls
(or crossing of rivers)
was enough.


Neither spoke,
but both crossed
the rubble of the broken
wall. 

Better

And I will love you
with the windows of
my heart rolled down,
to let you in as the 
highway zephyr
through my bones.


Because there is
no greater time
than pink evenings
with winds that blow
the curtains freely.
No better time to 
roll down all the hills
of green new life
and to let you
into my soul.


To open my
ribcage to 
you
with this beating
heart-bird winging
away, and the sad song 
it makes matches
the fading the sun.


No better day to
pin the laundry
on the line and let
the sun run her
hands through its
threads. And the trees
will bend to dapple the
children with verdant light.


Because there is no better
place than the hollow
of summer suburbia,
no better time than 
the inverse of dawn
to whisper
back to your zephyr 
fingers that I love
you with the windows
of my heart rolled down.

Shedding

I will sing the birdsongs
into your sleeping ears
until you wake
with the spring air.


The windows open in the
rain and in the quiet song
there was the abandonment
of our old skins.

Diaspora Fishes

Wistful of the fish
on ice, 
poised as though
still swimming,
silver bodies 
sliding through
silk currents.


They are whole
and glassy,
straight from the
sea, 300 miles
inland. They are artifacts
intact and nearly conscious.
As though they will
flop from the ice
and swim through the
aisles, picking out spices
and herbs.


They are pulled from
crates of frozen ocean
and laid to rest,
models on a slick
catwalk, a final
state of entirety.


Their eyes still
sharp and clear,
still smelling
like salt and brine,
still shimmering
under the fluorescents.


Simply diaspora,
they rest and sleep.
Waiting for a return
trip ticket to whence
they came. The bed
of melting ice
a bench at the greyhound 
station.

Suburban Western

I will take 
the strange desert
sky of Suburbia,
for in its
clinical pop culture
cult,
a lingering beauty 
pervades.


The blue 
curves in a 
way geometrically
impossible,
I hold that it 
is unreal.


And in the surrealism
I pause in the street,
a Kodak freeze frame
for a movie poster.
In the middle of the road,
leaning off a bike
and the vast
blue where a title would 
rest.


I imagine the font,
Impact 48,
tracking of 3.
And it looms in the cloudless
suburban sky.


The trees are infants
who are stunted 
and cannot offer arches
for old-time photographs.
So I stand in the modern
frame.


It is a western 
I stand in,
No cactus in sight,
but the sky is just
too big for these 
ticky-tacky houses.


Bigger than Montana
and I stand beneath
its power, picking title themes.

Spring Hills of Green

I had forgotten 
the verdant hills
of May and their
glimmering embrace.


The shades the flowers
put forth to dance
in the springtime,
and the sunny haze
over the fields.


I had forgotten 
the inevitable.


The new life
pours on and outward
despite 
the rest of the world.

Winter Sea Pt. 4

Sputtering in the
winter sea, 
the spitting salt 
hurls itself into
the harbor,
up onto the 
docks and 
past the weeping
lobster boats
piled high with traps.


The lights on the shoal
flicker and blink from the
lighthouse, dim 
and glow in the open sea.
Away into the green
as it swells and breaks white
as skiing snow, we venture 
ever deeper into the
January chill. 


The buoys
bob in a panicked attempt
to keep warm, to circulate
their thin blood and maintain
the freighters who low
and wail, their steel
hulls creaking-
their brittle old bones
cracking.


The winter yells
in hoarse tones over the
ships 
and the sound is enough
to deafen the winds.

50s Beauty

I sit at the invisible vanity,
painting my lips fiery red
with curlers in my hair.


And my slim wrists
mirror the triangular
bends in my waist
as I sit perched as a
bird, gazing in the 
looking glass.


Long robe around my feet,
sultry sheer just
like the advertisement
in the department store.


You walk in and loosen your
tie. The television goes 
off air in the living room,
and the strange
unnamed hum 
settles over the
newly birthed suburbs.


You drop the needle 
on a scratchy 45
and we slow dance
in ethereal grace
around our bedroom
before settling
under the chenille 
quilt
to dream supermarket dreams.

haiku

Glittering produce
one thousand gems decaying
in fluorescent tears.

Dirty Laundry

I'll shake out the
night, our dirty 
laundry flapping
in the cold. 
Hanging on the line,
it catches the dew
and glitters.


There is a glint
of dawn on the
sheets, a shadow
of blush at the edges,
and I smooth them 
until the wrinkles
return to their youth.


There is a breath of
fresh air seeping
from the seams,
I can feel your
hot breath
in the wind
down my spine.


The clothespins slip
on the line and 
teeter like long
bone fingers,
the tree leaves
shadow the sheets
in the breeze as 
away from there
our bodies drift.

Death Cab Eels

I drop the needle
onto Death Cab.
I feel your heart
drop as I climb into bed.


Some electric current.
There are eels in our blankets.
I'll shake them out 
of the wide-open windows
as we shiver in 
our underwear.


Your indentations 
in the left side of the bed
have gone cold in the wind.
Sound waves carry through
the spaces of your bones.
Your skinny fingers struggle 
to maintain yourself
here in the bed.


I fear you will cry,
your head in the pillows
as the rain clip-claps
on the windowsill,
watering the ivy
and quieting the birdsong.


Ben Gibbard croons
soft at you from across
the room under the plastic cover
to your ancient turntable. 
You cry through him,
your soft body
quivering slightly
with chills.


The eels slither by your toes
and I feel the jolt,
they nibble and writhe-
it scares me how you conjure them.
It scares me how you cry. 


Side A ends, 
and I don't move to
flip it. I lie next to
you- transient space,
and let the eels 
gather round my ankles. 

Telescopic

I'll look at you
from the far-away
end of the telescope.
And I see you miles away,
smaller than I remembered you,
your hollow chicken bones
breaking.


Standing on the edge of
the earth, my eyes
are burnt
with starlight,
you are burning
to my retinas
ghost-image
of a boy scout fire
I could never build.


The flint of stars
collides-
I break apart, my
tectonic plates 
crashing into the ocean.
The meteor shower
mirrored like an oil slick.


So I dig my teeth
into the fabric of space
to pull myself closer
to you, the white
of my mouth 
twin of stars-
calm calm
of falling stars.


An odd silence 
at the corner of
space. The end
of the telescope obscures
you from where I stand.
Masked with the curtains
of the horizon.


From the sea,
I am bound to 
you, mirroring. 

The Xerox

There is a Xerox
box in the corner.


The Xerox box 
lives as itself,
all of its pasts
and presents reside
there, dusty and meek
in the garage.


"paper today
for business tomorrow"
it says, and I imagine
the brown-noser it wants 
to be. Slowly, the box
and I understand.


From its home, 
we may visit.
The elements of past style
live in its corrugated bones,
a shaking featherweight.
It is somewhere on a 
Pandora scale- 
to open it would be to 
let the sea escape.
To let the polaroids,
the afros, and faded vinyl-
to let them travel.
Away from me.


I leave it there,
the Xerox box
whose life contains mine.
It wishes for corporate
promotions. But it isn't aware.
I wish for the photos
and bad haircuts
to stay away.
Buried in the belly
of the beast in my garage. 

Blue Period

Funny, the shades
of blue I see you in.
There are warped edges,
like rippled waves.
Tidal blues 
tint you, and you 
are not pink.


No, never are you
a pale imitation,
of the layer of yourself
I see through
the sea.


You are demure,
a sublime shimmer
I cannot pin down.
Nothing in the light of the
trees can chase you,
no sea rip-tides 
will drown you.


I see you in the blues
of my mind,
forever captured 
as a Picasso.