deviant art

Deviant Login
Buy ArtBuy T-Shirts & Gear Buy adCast Buy Premium Membership
Shop		  Join deviantART for FREE Take the Tour
×
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
untitledseducing the writer
is pointless;
he'll seduce himself
if you're silent.
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
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
daliin that second,

(when the sun beat so hard i could hear
every waving particle, see the color before it was
swallowed; i closed my eyes and felt the concrete
blaring, the refracting windows aching, and each
bird crackling in the parched trees, feathers rustling
and beaks clacking, blackness bleached orange and
my hands sought in the silence of my pockets,
imprisoned and pallid like a dog yapping in that hot car)

i became.
Misconceptionsthe extrovert isn't—
self-possessed shining,
sun in the sky of a million
blue silks sewn together:
that summer to come,
a laundered morning strewn
with white yearning—

no,
and the introvert isn't—
scraping coins in an alley,
smoggy eyes above a mouth like
lines: red-cracked but parting
when stars break gray clouds,
calling on their mica beds
to reflect off his face—

no,
the extrovert is—
the man sweet-talking the first ideas
of his tongue,
waiting for reception—

while the introvert
thinks.
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
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
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
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
Autumn in RetrospectI became a truant in fourth grade; that may seem young, but no one was keeping an eye on me, my 'teacher' was a rotating face, and I didn't think education was all that important, especially the one I was getting. Multiplication and division hadn't been taught, the recently rebound social studies books ended at President Reagan, and while I could read and even liked to read, I didn't learn anything at school I couldn't learn at the library. The librarians were nicer than the subs, anyway, and the real teacher was on an extended pregnancy leave that she wasn't keen to come off of. I'm not sure, but I think she quit the next year.

Papi went to
dandelion winethe dandelion has made its appeal
to wine and whimsy,
but it's plucked— regardless of nostalgia.

[i am that lion's ragged blooms, and you are the strong winds that blow my meek seeds away, and he— he is the brawny child pulling me like another weed passe. and there have been other gardeners with hands mortared in black veins by fertile soil, savaging between tame dalmatian tulips and mums the color of fat tabbies embellished by aureate mornings; there have always been these potted plants prettily set as if all of creation planned them so.]

and its roots remain tucked
In the good earth,
flirting with raindrops and shelved rever
Census of Ghostshe now resides in susurration:
shaken from our summer sheets,
flags drawn taut and shuddering,
and wispseeds rising into the light
with their dressing gowns unbuttoned,
planting onto my lips that name
i've tried to hang with himself;

on a late morning,
while folding your laundry,
i found him again and held his tongue
when he yearned to speak of love
that once transpired in his passion,
or maybe it was the infatuation
of surrealists: brown skin but touched
upon each other,

marking the insignificant with brands
of remembrance: like the crinkling of
tinfoil or the crisping of smokers' lungs
or the thought that cigarettes are only
romantic i
nirvanafeigning euphoria
on the outskirts of joliet,
i saw You between red glowing streams:
weaving the horizon like a tapestry,
recycling gold beads from a pale morning sari,
dyeing blue-violet fever, shivers

leaking from my head down my arms,
resting in my belly beside You—mixing veins in the night,
embellishing the road with thoughts
of creation: You spin a thread and it unwinds,
fraying at the ends where the cars break the asphalt

and i convulse,
spinning out of control—You doe-eyed like the kid
who crashed his mother's car and dies heavy beneath
that semi, stuck in the pitch dark, oil blearing opalescent
under the gaping taillig
stillyou lust to make his long legs quiver
like two blades of grass
heavy with morning dew

but you're the first frost of november.
Browse More Like This

More from *glossolalias

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
A Spiritual CrisisOutside, parked between two gleaming hybrids,
the green truck rusts and putters. Its leather upholstery
is sunfaded and puckered, giving beneath my weight. I am
conscious of my knees in the cramped space, holding them together
as not to disturb the gearshift. He gave me his keys and told me
to start the green truck while he clocked out, but I become aware
of the looks from young environmentalists who come to Ashbary
to enjoy soy lattes and guiltlessly partake in vegan cookies and bagels; they
turn their noses up at the noisy transmission, the black smoke pouring upward
from the exhaust pipe. For a ridiculous moment, staring at the hol

Featured in Groups

:iconprosepoetry-elegance: :icontower-artists:
×

you still love him

:iconglossolalias:

i.

the bare bulb flickers, and aurora's bones quiver, porous with constellations. she is named, she believes, for the mottled color of her skin: black, purple, green, yellow, and blue erupting on the pale night sky. when she tries to bend her arm, it hurts, and he says, "just rest. just rest. just rest."

they freeze over.



ii.

he meets daisy at the clinic. she is yellow in the cold but tans in the summer: blossoming daintily, shimmering with pollen, beautiful amongst the long wild grasses. she whispers and presses a flimsy little card onto his palm; "i can tell you're better than the others."

aurora accepts her methadone.



iii.

in the arctic, the sky splits; aurora rests beneath the flickering sun and the snow melts, blistering.

201

21 10 4
:iconglossolalias:

you still love himby *glossolalias

DescriptionDetailsShare
Download HTML download, 937 bytes
inspired by: [link]
song suggested by: :icontrembling-knees:
for this game: [link]

inspired by a short story from junot diaz's "drown."
©2013 *glossolalias
Category: Literature / Prose / Fiction / Transgressive / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

Details

Stats

Submitted on
January 3
File Size
937 bytes
Views
201
Favourites
21 (who?)
Comments
10
Downloads
4
URL
Thumb
Only verified accounts can report policy violations. Please check your email and click on the verification link.
* Required field
Add a Comment:
 
Preview   Add Comment
:iconhazeltown:
*hazeltown Mar 6, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
this is incredible.
Reply
:iconglossolalias:
*glossolalias Mar 6, 2013
ty.
Reply
:iconarchelyxs:
*archelyxs Jan 24, 2013
That last line is amazing.
Reply
:iconglossolalias:
*glossolalias Jan 24, 2013
thank you.
Reply
:icon007-seriously-serial:
~007-seriously-serial Jan 8, 2013
I love this! I think it is poetry though.
Reply
:iconglossolalias:
*glossolalias Jan 8, 2013
it's "prosetry" i suppose, which there really isn't a category for; as a general rule, if it's not rhythmic or doesn't make an attempt to be rhythmic, i don't consider it poetry and won't categorize it as such.
Reply
:iconvespera:
`vespera Jan 4, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
:heart: yes. just yes.
Reply
:iconglossolalias:
*glossolalias Jan 4, 2013
:)
Reply
:icontrembling-knees:
~trembling-knees Jan 3, 2013   General Artist
Ugh this is beautiful

:heart:
Reply
:iconglossolalias:
*glossolalias Jan 3, 2013
:heart:
Reply
Add a Comment:
 
Preview   Add Comment
©2013 deviantART. All rights reserved
About Us | Contact Us | Developers | Careers | Site Tour | Help & FAQ Advertise | Premium Membership Etiquette | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Copyright Policy