This weekin live currentevents: your eyes. All power can bedangerous: Director alternating, you, socket to me. Plugged in and the gridis humming, this electricity, molecule-deep desire: particular friction, a chargestrong enough to stopa heartor start itagain; volt, re-volt--I shudder, I stutter, I startto life. I've got my ionyou, copper-top, so watch how youconduct yourself. Here's today'snewsflash: a battery of rollingblackouts in California, sudden, like lightning kisses: sudden, whitehotdarkness and you'rehere, fumbling forthat small switchwith an urgent surgestrong enough to killlesser machines. Static makes hair raise, makes things cling, makes things rise likea gathering stormcharging outsideour darkened houseand here I am: tempest, pouring outmouthfullsof tsunami on the ground,I've got that rain-soaked kite, that drenched key. You know what it's for, circuit-breaker, you knowhow to kiss until it's hertz.
Daphne Gottlieb
It sounds better than it is, this business of surviving, making it throughthe wrong placeat the wrong timeand livingto tell. When the talk shows and movie creditswear off, it's just me and my dumbluck. This morningI had that dream again: the one where I'm dead.I wake up and nothing'smuch different. Everything's gonesepia, a dirty bourbon glassby the bed, you're still dead.I could stumbleto the shower, scrub the luck of breath off my skinbut it's futile. The killer always wins. It's just a matterof time. And I havetime. I have grief and liquor tofill it. Tonight, the liquor and I aretalking to you. The liquor says, 'remember'and I fill in the rest, your hands, your smile. All those times. Remember. Tonight the liquor and Iare telling you about our day. We made it out of bed. We miss you. We were surprised by the blood betweenour legs. We miss you. We made it to the videostore, missing you. We stoppedat the liquor storehoping the bourbon would stopthe missing. There's always morebourbon, more missingtonight, when we got home, there was a stray catat the door. She came in. She screams to be touched. She screamswhen I touch her. She's rightat home. Not me. The whisky is openthe vcr is on.I'm runningthe film backwardsand one by oneyou come back to me, all of you. Your pulses stutter to a beginyour eyes go from fixed to blinkthe knives come out of your chests, the chainsawsroar outfrom your legsyour wounds seal overyour t-cells multiply, your tumors shrinkthe maniac killerdisappearsit's just you and meand the bourbon and the movieflickering togetherand the air breathes us and I am home, I amluckyI am rightbefore everythinggoes black
poetry horror
When tonight you couldn't make the phone ringwhen you used to make the sun risewhen trees used to throw themselvesin front of youto be paper for love lettersthat was how i knew i had to do itswaddle the kids we never hadagainst january's cold slicebundle them in winterclothes they never neededso i could drop them off at my mom'seven though she lives on the other side of the countryand at this late west coast hour isassuredly east coast sleepingpeacefullyher house was lit like a candlethe way homes should bewarm and goldenand homeand the kids ran inand jumped at the bichon frisenamed luckythat she never hadthey hugged the dogit wriggledand the kids were happyyours and minethe ones we never hadand my mom wasgrand maternal, which is to say, with stylethat only comes when you've seenenough to know gracelike when to pretend it's christmas ora birthday soshe lit her voice with tinylights and pretendedshe didn't see me cryingas i drove awayto the hotel connected to the barwhere i ordered the cheapest whisky they hadjust because it shares your first namebecause they don't make a whiskycalled and i only thought what i gotwas whati orderedi toasted the hangoverinevitable as sunthat used to risein your namei toasted the carnivalswe never went toand the things you never wonfor methe ferris wheels we neverkissed on and all the dreamsbetween usthat sat therelike balloons on a carney's boardwaiting to explode with passionbut slowly deflatedhung slaveunder the pin-prick of a tackhungheads downlike loverswhen it doesn'twork, like meat last callafter too many cheaptoo many sweettoo muchwhisky makes mesick, like the smell of cheap, like the smell ofthe deadlike the cheap, dead flowersyou never sentthat i never threwout of the windowof a cari neverreallyowned
poetry relationships breakups
Come back so i can say yes this time do it again now that i know what to call what you didthis time i'll be ready i like it rough now and i'm done with romance i never met another man who loved me so much at first sight he had to hurt me to do it
poetry rape
poetry
You can take this mouththis wound you wantbut you can't kissand make itbetter.
poetry marriage passion relationships sex
All the black leathershe needsis the E-Z boy reclinerwhere her love is parkedwith one of his hands wrapped around a remote, the other, a bottle of beer. She's right. It's kinky. The way he doesn't look awayfrom the TV, as her head bobsin his laplike a fisherman's floaton a nature program, hecticwith the pacehis breath sets. His crotch swellsunder her mouth'sprowess. He's sucha sweethearthe waitsuntil thecommercialsto come.
poetry relationships
There is nothinggoing on. I took nothingyou wanted. You can'thave it back.
As she bends for a Kleenex in the dark, I am thinking of other girls: the girl I loved who fell in love with a lion--she lost her head over it--we just necked a lot; of the girl who fell in love with the tightrope, got addicted to getting high wired and nothing else was enough; all the beautiful, damaged women who have come through my life and I wonder what would have happened if I'd met them sooner, what they were like before they were so badly wounded. All this time I thought I'd been kissing, but maybe I'm always doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, kissing dead girls in hopes that the heart will start again. Where there's breath, I've heard, there's hope.
women poetry
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