[x]

a streetcar to nowherei.

he must crack
when his hands are tulle:

paling dry,
rough and tearing,
bought by the yard
or cent-marked minute,

spin a skirt
that won't last a winter,

shed bohemia
and snort ballerinas,
hope he's flexible

like tulle:

thin and shimmering,
don't stay another minute,
clear the aisles and say,

halloween's over
and he must crack
when his hands are tulle:

quivering
wind-burnt dancers,
caught aflame
by a craving spark

like tulle:

crisp and seething,
acrid burning,
black waste and thin ash

ii.

"name,
like your real name or
just something i can call you,
something that won't make me

feel like i'm talking down
to you. not because
i r

a string drawn tautthere are so many new stars
in your skin that i can't believe
each neuron is its own world, alight
with spinning planets and gaunt aliens
breathing god

in the absence of your name from
a dull life: dim cars on the paved street
and the cat walks sideways here, beneath
a ladder that clatters and you shudder,
saying god

i just had a chill, and is this room cold
or are we in the gut of a giant who's strung out
seven days and lifeless, biting the apple and
a dragon, wishing for his mother to coo
mijo, dios

es magno: the earth is spinning in the eyes
of a turtle with a red shell who swims in
the flowers ophelia braided, who swall

To His Coy Mistress[es]i. earl and lady grey

gentle kin,
you have often graced me with your soft-spoken company, bergamot blossoms adorning your dark hair, fragrant as your steamy exhalations. you remind me of simple home and something untouchably elegant, pale and supple when i dress your skin with pallid cream and soften your thin, graceful hands. on a bleak winter evening, snow glittering by lamplight, you are a royal pleasure: a warm complement.

ii. darjeeling

bengali goddess,
i will lay you on the finest saris, those embroidered with gold threads and flawless diamonds that shimmer like your black eyes. you are the champagne of my harem, floral yet astri

To Him, With Loveintimacy is airing out
those facts you have held
against yourself,

allowing someone else
to draw his own conclusions about
your vain pursuits of existence.

Late Monet in a Boy's Bedroomyou have mourned for a childhood spent
siphoning color's touch from men with your eyes
unshut, begging at the heels of lovers who

wanted to know your shadows. you accepted them
into your bed, reminding yourself of such moments when
you lay back: powerless, aroused. his hands knew you

in wide spectrums they shouldn't have, but you lusted
and lust for another whose brush is careless, whose teeth
will paint your neck without praying to consequence,
who will have you jealously, selfishly: who will let you

call him by that paternal name that rots your liver, that
makes your tongue soft for affectations. he was a liar,
but a charming, intelligen

IntimacyI asked to be slapped—
and your palm met my cheek
with constraint, cupped to lessen
the ensuing redness, the responsive tears
that welled but only in my left eye.

There are things like tealights
and dinners after midnight that we agree
to be romantic: that we consume
through antique filters, lace
between our fingers, but your palms
sweat when we hold hands
and I've never liked skin webbing,
nor the catch of calluses—

So, I propose to rewrite
a definition: mostly for my sake,
but also for the sakes of others
who have found themselves wondering
if they might be a-something
because they don't like to be touched
softly on the sk

novemberthe sun is a dim pearl
beneath a blanket of gray
hung low from the heavens;

i'm your yellow tremor
paled by the cold, aching
for a proper sunrise.

terminali.

we landed in oklahoma
and drank cheap martinis in the terminal;
you carried my guitar and fell in love
with my voice but not my tongue,
not my hands.

ii.

there's a man with a garage
that looks like a plane because nothing
meant more to him. will you make a model
of that bar? will you make a model
of my red cheeks? or will you live in a townhome
with her and three children?

iii.

the problem was you're not gay.
the problem was there was feeling
but it wasn't for us. i had you but
it wasn't for us.

iv.

i'm not sure if i resent you,
but i remember that bar and every pockmark
on the stool you sat on while i played
the song that parted yo

lukewarmshe had the kind of voice
that seemed to be stuck
in the hour of four o'clock
in the morning - soft
and tired and luring,
mumbling her way through
subways and tunnel lights
all pale yellow with noise.

there was tea and long baths
and longer absences,
hiccups of breath
the best
she could do.
long springs and
longer falls,
one equinox to the next
and still the bad
was never that bad
and the good
was never that
good,
and she continues to hum
the birds continue to sing
the apples continue to
grow and
sour and
fall,

and bury themselves
again.

love's austere and lonely officesi.

ronnie picks rose petals
and eats them, chews the pink to yellow
in his cigarette teeth. his sister, peggy,
asks how they taste, and he says, "good,
like whimsy and perfume," and picks three petals
fat with pigment and water; she tastes the first
and likes the second and the third is the sweet on her tongue
when ronnie dies of liver failure. she eats the reddest
blooms on his casket.

ii.

if tommy were a girl and jenny a boy,
the children would be perfect:
tommy with impish nose and nymph hands,
jenny rumbling with the rooneys from new city,
and mother frets for both their blond[e] heads.

peggy buys the twins paletas
but ronnie spe

Narcolepsylurid enigma, and
a stroke of starry night

vulnerable, you are
achilles heel and weep

the loss of venus and mars
and all her pitying apathy

of bittersweet occultation; but
for only a moment of silence

lonesome quarry of internalized wars
and striking, clement gems

just unfold:
sleep

Eighteight.
i felt most violated
when you denied it—
evidence may have mounted
in the mouths of other victims
but i haven't spoken—
even in the wake of certainty,
family and loyalty
forked my liar's tongue—
maybe it's enough
that you know what you did—
because i can't bring myself
to hate you.

seven.
your son's beautiful—
you were my first
and i don't regret that—
in your arms,
i realized myself.

six.
it wasn't my fault—
i received the letter
years too late
and suicide
has never been sympathetic
in the eyes of those
who suffered to live—
yet, i write for you,
remember your face acutely,
long fo

BeliefBelief

She tells him the child is not his.
The old women mutter and cluck
as they slap wet cloth against river stones.
He wraps his arms around his chest as though he fears
he will also sprout with child. "A dove,"
he quietly asks? She points to a blood spot
on her cheek. "He pecked me here." It still hurts
when she touches it. It always hurts.
He loves the child, the cuckold's hatchling. He loves his lying wife.
But he knows she lies. When the old men stumble
into the stable, beards matted, coarse as grain,
he simply mutters, "Drunks," bad wine, betrayal.
One afternoon as he saws cedar planks, sawdust thick as pollen,
an angel catches his

her depressions used to wrinkle the bedsheets.she lay around for hours, then called out,
"i don't know whether i'm too old or young for this,
but i'm just too tired to face today and tomorrow
might be the same. will you get your brother for me?
i left him at school this morning, and i'm not sure what time
he needs to be picked up. i've been forgetting so much lately,
so maybe i should work less, take a vacation somewhere warm,
or sleep until the year settles its dust. but we can't do that now,
can we? responsibility's a bitch, jorge. don't get married,
at least not to someone you'll divorce."

like a good son, i collected adrian from the pavement
where he'd been waiting too long,
a

astronomerswhen we're together
dusk is containable; the moon in my palms
and the stars on your ceiling.

we lull the city to sleep
with our theories of life; my tongue curling
into speech.

do you remember,
when Jupiter was a silver wick, lighting its countless moons?

that night,
you balanced a cigarette off your lips,
and I watched the vermillion flame burn life
as a newborn sun;

stars forming,
planets moulding and constellations snaked
above our eyes.

i imagined
what it would be like to be curled
inside the embers – creator and destroyer
of worlds,
so close to your lips.

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catholic guiltMother Mary, made of porcelain,
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atop the dresser and watches over
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but we stiffen, hold our breaths, and
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don't tel

lungburningyou get the lungburning after midnight
and you're dying to be demeaned,
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untitled

by *glossolalias, Dec 23, 2012, 9:48:09 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

seducing the writer
is pointless;
he'll seduce himself
if you're silent.

untitledby *glossolalias

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

love 3 3

joy 1 1

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~tickersymbol Apr 5, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Splendid!

*glossolalias Apr 11, 2013

thank you

~oviedomedina Mar 11, 2013

Succint, beautiful, and true!

*glossolalias Mar 11, 2013

thank you!

~neonsquiggle Mar 1, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

True, and beautiful.

*glossolalias Mar 2, 2013

~papichulo34 Feb 28, 2013

interesting and funny..

*glossolalias Mar 2, 2013

thank you!

~papichulo34 Mar 4, 2013

=KissTheSunrise Feb 18, 2013

touchè

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