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…