Photo by Gabor Barbely on Unsplash
Trapeze Artist
From an upcoming untitled essay collection
There are certain undeniable truths you learn as a child. Of course, these don’t really hold much mettle as you get older, but the impact remains the same. For example, I was pretty sure that running away to the circus was a thing.
It was mentioned so much in different mediums, from cartoons to books to being used as a turn of phrase. Was there some special program for soon-to-be runaway children that all circuses had? Some sort of universal code like the direction you turn…
It should have had a name
IN BIG BLOCK LETTERS.
What will we call this?
When I gently touch your hand,
And stand on tiptoe to reach your ear, lips brushing.
What should we make of this,
This shapeless thing?
This thing that finds my hand inching towards yours in the back of a cab,
The thing that laughs and says it’s better that way.
I could not write it out,
If I tried.
You could fill my empty glass again.
2–4–1, sticky and soda sweet,
My legs brush yours in bars and
My hands itch to write you deeper into me.
I want to peel this girl,
Like a god damn mandarin.
She is so sweet.
Realizing.
Her voice was scratchy,
Jeans cuffed and
she had these huge, brown eyes.
Of course, she would be the one
To wake me up.
Some many of my poems begin with “I”
I have deluded myself into a vision
Of my own importance.
I have imagined that I have painted mountains slick with snowmelt
And rorests ripe with spring
From my words
And from me only.
I imagine that I am more important than the very yellow
Yolk in the middle of the egg.
That I am as necessary as the thickness of the plate
Preventing your hands from burning.
I am as needed as the plywood crisscrossing underneath
These brown vinyl booths.
I am as important as the few sips of coffee that…
I hate those stacked coffee cup things. The ones that come in their own little wire holder, making it so that you slide each up out like its a ceramic little pringle. Who decided that getting a cup for coffee had to be even more difficult? When I see them for sale on second-hand groups and in thrift stores, there is always one missing. Not two because then the whole thing would look empty and sad looking and thrift stores deserve better than empty and sad.
That one cup was probably the only one the previous owner ever used. Figuring…
News of the dead is rolled out
And no one rings bells for them.
We gather in parks and around
Weather worn monuments,
No one moves or makes a sound,
Our solitude slipping over us, even in
The bright sunshine.
Brisk walks and no one nods,
We are at odds with our humanness.
How do we move into this new space?
It has been creased over and coffee shops windows make one ache.
If it were possible,
I would peel pack the first layer of the sky,
Open the lid of this box we are trapped in,
Look the creator…
I think of you in yellows,
in smooth, shimmery golds.
There’s a bee next to your name
and it’s as stingingly sweet
as you are.
Sweet darlin’
I hope time does that thing
where it ceases to exist
next time I see you.
Hey sweet baby,
It’s been a while since my last letter and I’m real sorry about that. These cats is crazy here in the city baby, a kind of crazy I can really get down with. Like real, low down dirty crazy.
Let me start at the beginning before I get ahead of myself. And if you ain’t sitting down, I suggest you do.
Did you get that little blue number I sent you?
I’m gonna sit here while I write and imagine that you’re wearing that, all dolled up and reading this here letter.
Maybe those toes are dangling…
There’s cinnamon at the bottom.
It’s 11 am and I have yet to wash. My teeth have that gross, almost rice paper feeling to them and my hair is in need of moisturizing. It’s Sunday and I am trying to own my idleness.
I brew coffee that is made from grounds I left in the grinder from the previous day. The new coffee shop on my corner finally opened and with the promise of quickly prepared coffee and cold cream, I abandoned my inefficiently ground beans and walked over.
I recently spilled butter in this damn thing. My dog is…
Reverent toward impossibly huge robots and Folgers coffee.