You can see the land
flattening out, down a sterilized
corridor or a tongue out for Syraquil.
The fast up you've faced has bitch
slapped you, and by that I mean your very own best
friend, has whipped the stimulated
flesh of your cheeks, like an alcoholic father
too raged after work. About that bitch,
you loved; your bitch has led you
to the Fairmont Hotel where a strange investment
banker is detangling the knots out your hair with palm fulls
of conditioner under a waterfall shower that echoes
your frenzied laughter so you can hear how ballistic
you sound ten times as loud, and his wide-eyes that haven't withdrawn
from every freefall twist of your spins.
I'm telling you, it's worth it like a sky-dive
scrape-free and alive. He'll trace the apple bruised bad bites
that run down the length of your back and you turn
to half-and half cream,
or crystal rock sugar, or both, smiling to yourself under the heat of the
expensive spray.
You fear the fast up will never stop, not
because you don't find it ecstatic, attractive, jackpot
especially when it makes love to you in the Commons
so lustfully and bad and for everyone to see, see that makes it not
love anymore, no more of it, it's something else entirely
because you know, you know like your middle name, like your brother's
biggest insecurity, that the slow down will slide
you, eerily and reeling, heart-stopped
and dream-dropped into the wasteland, again
that space land of apathy. Like patterns, like clockwork,
design, (every concept the fast up spits on)
and you miss that bitch, her bitch whip you take with a smile,
enraptured; you smack that bitch back smiling, uh.
You try to feast your eyes on the fast up spell
while you can, while you can have it, while it's there,
write "God's Son" across the belly for Nas and bathe in his
wisdom. Write every shitty poem till the clock spins and windows
reverse sun and moon without attention.
Flip sleep the bird and fuck married men,
buy every dress that reminds you of sex, which you can't afford
and then return it, because you're not so sexy after all.
Call every sister (fine, friend) and say "Weeee!"
throw all your affection towards the city, so hard and big
that it begins to hate you,
you and your predictable as Japanese trains switching season
commotion. It can take you though, that's the strangest part,
it holds you in its bars on Boylston and walks with you down
Charles St, holding your hand like a buddy-system.
It shows you Sam Adams statues that make you weep and you never
cry; it must be the knowing, the knowing that you weren't there
or that maybe you would have been a different me in a different century.
Or maybe you cry just because you're tired of this pointless freedom
trail tour and you just want a Sam Adams and cold.
The city understands, holds your hand, even when you
gave up the sights for a better night. Everybody feels this way,
and especially for you, fifty times harder against the blue.
Secrets
I always knew, people have secrets.
But you tend to only fixate on those baby
lies at the bar that spin out your lips
like small sins so the guy you're sitting next to
fixates on your stories as well as your frame,
propped up on the stool sexy but with such
interesting things to say. Lies, but it's easier to adjust eyes
that way, watch how they widen.
Or there are those secrets you catch
quick in the backyard
at your Mother's birthday
party, when a full glass of pinot grigio slips
out the ladies grasp and the grass absorbs
it instantly, suctioning out the secret.
I speak to her all through dinner as the wide outside
sky dims, she slurs through sips about how, how
I look like my bru-thur, secrets like this smirk or spill and
it's all so silly till lady stumbles away. She slump into the passengers
side of her husbands SUV and speeds away.
I notice secrets here and there and I always
tilt my head back to watch them catch some flame, head on a stick
exuberant and burning for a moment, how do you
turn away? There is always smoke and someone wheezing.
I just, didn't know it was everybody. Everybody
has something to hide.
Half his age, I strut up the cement steps
to his almost perfect house, where he is shirtless
rolling paint onto a bedroom wall, one of five, empty now but
not future empty. He is blasting music ten years after
his time and another decade before mine, so we listen to Pearl Jam
whine about how everything is black. We crack Sam Summers
and make believe I am here to see the walls
or to talk and when
we talk we talk about the world, for a change. Exchange ourselves
delve into the past I like him he likes me, ready.
He is knowing and I am nobody, but ripe, and somehow this is attraction
and it is basically basic, like how an infant only feels hunger
but knows nothing of formula, you just have to feed it. That is
the only way to keep it alive.
Instantly we are both intoxicated
in this, and that.
When we slept together
in her bed, the only piece of furniture in the house,
I realized it is everyone
who lies ... everyone out for the unique sound of
their own cries. We wanted it.
And even grown men,
who build dreams into dream houses, wish to
shatter it's vinyl windows
they have yet to install.
I'll never feel bad about the badness
only metaphorical.
Why do I only date drop-outs?
Or the ones who drop me or the ones
I drop-kick into the dumpster, no sweat
and so much less dirty.
This year I've only dated boys with no fathers
or gone father or dead father ... absent father
away father bad father, or the ones who I make
father me? I made an infant my ghost this year
because I feared it's father could be
any of these. I only date the drinkers but date a drinker
and you double, that's
obvious. We found each other at the bottom
of the same bottle and never left until one of us
darted free out the neck, that's called destiny. I've only known
chain-smokers or the ones who chain
me or the ones who wear chains I never
knew the meaning of. I've only
watched spitters spit, spitters are the worst
of them. Wherever they spit, it mine-as-well
be aimed for your forehead.
I've sucked and sucked up and been a sucker, I've spit too,
when we weren't sweaty
enough. Spread and slipped them into my
silk. I've stunned them out their senses with my
sinny scream or even silence, soft little sentences
or even one syllable words to split the silence. I've scared
them away with my wail, stupid little song. I've slowed
into him so spell-ish that he slid out me in seconds
to escape, the only sauce left: all over my stomach, little
sockeyes swimming in circles, all the potential
stunning me, there on the floor. I sold them all to myself.
This year I've loved none of them;
I only wanted to taste their trouble
or watch while their trouble tasted me.
Hey Bob Dylan, you once said
rock n’ roll wasn’t enough, there were great catch-phrases
and driving pulse rhythms ... but folk music, more despair, more
sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural.
You evolve faster than an episode of Planet
Earth on fast forward.
I lied. You are not Bob Dylan but you are just as
esoteric. When you go for your morning or
afternoon runs, who the hell could know besides
you where you are off running to- or from? I don’t think god knows
or even Mum. But it’s the running that keeps you
unwavering, a man who holds a machete steady, young.
You wear it like your chef’s uniform, everyday, passion
sweating of your dark skin smelling like enchilada
chicken aioli sauce or a champagne beet sorbet, tossing
the baseball back to Jake in the sun-setting
backyard, the same damn day. Everday
you wake up the same man with a different plan.
The only difference between you and Robert
Allen Zimmerman is that you didn’t marry Sara.
They’re both glamorous nymphs with arrows
and bows, but Sara let Bobby go
and Mom would never, she would never slam your door
both in a Calico dress,
you and Bob say “you must forgive me of my
unworthiness.” Also, Dylan stayed up for days
in the Chelsea Hotel but you were asleep, and deep,
with Mom in your grasp and all four kids in beds
dreaming, we really were, probably airplanes and stuff,
and by that I mean you were writing (dream-sighting) bright-eyed
lady on the high-lands for her.
My favorite memory of you
Dad is hardly a memory, Daddy
it is when I see you
happy or pissed off; when you are with us. That is all.
This is my Kanye "Hey Mama"
my Nelly "Luvin' Me"
my Pac "Dear Mama" you appreciated
my attempt to be Brenda Shaughnessy.
I saw my baby book there was a quote
said your baby comes through you not from you
mommy I came from you. Mom you made me worth it
Mom you are pretty. Mom you squeeze my hand squeeze
fresh oranges on Christmas morning, hey santa chick, you buy those presents
not for the material matter but for the tearful look I get
when the matter matters. I want you to hold my first
baby want you to watch me hold my first baby. Mom I know
nothing you haven't showed me. You taught me Pig Latin waitin
in the Doctor's office in overalls, Iway ovelay ouyay Mater.
...Conor Oberst said, you taught me victory is sweet
even deep in the cheap seats,
felt your poltergeist love like Savannah heat. Nope,
I already know victory's taste, sweeter than Savannah's heat and I've
been deep in seats so cheap they gave me golden
views, those sun soaked steepness hues. He stole
the words you taught me first but he
beat me to the lyrics, Bastard.
Mum you used to feed us blueberry pancakes
with syrup so soaked we could have drowned,
but the point is we didn't, we just felt sweeter than the berries and
you'd fork over seconds giggling.
Who were you when you were me? When
you were 23? Why did you marry Daddy and make me, call me Kaitlin Leigh?
Mommy when you lose your grace, it is rare, but you throw your head back and laugh,
so what it's just spilled milk, everything is calico, silk.
Mumma you throw salt on my night terrors so I don't slip
on my sleepy sidewalk. Mom you are Sophia Loren, zen,
eternally ten and happier than Cheesecake Factory bread. Lady
I'm your only little girl and you're my only lovely lady.
Madre, you are more forgiving than tomorrow
than the public's Mike Tyson sympathy, the morning
after pill, drunk-drive killer who is staring at the Mother
silent with the prison phone to their ears, both compelling peace
to shed drought.
Lois! Lois! Lois! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mommy! Momma! Momma! Momma!
Ma! Ma! Ma! Ma! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mommy
Mommy! Momma! Momma! Momma!
Lois Griffin: WHAT!?
Mom you had your wallet open when the ice-cream truck
tinkled by, mother you don't care
about your wallet, you'd give anyone all of it.
Mom. I've never seen your sorrow face without knowing it would not
last , to me you've never had a rusty past. And then you fast
during Easter?! You're either gullible
or right but either way you believe. You pay attention to the details
like Gatsby. You'd love to show me god or love for god to see me
but I just gotta be Free, I don't drink that tame tangy tea
or pray for anybody besides me or be anyone besides me,
three things: me, flea markets, the right to flee. Don't worry
I always come back to her, is it me? or she? I think it's us,
that's what people call two people we.
Mummy my favorite memory is your eye crinkles in the rear-view
watchin' me squirm in the backseat,
"Eat!" you make us at the dinner table, I hate beets. Stewie: "hi"
You are a friend to your friends and I don't feel the need
to explain, what kind of beauty that is.
I like the way Juelz eyes gleam,
Juelz Santana says, he says, Momma I just want you to know,
I'm in love with you so, if you wasn't here
I'd be in love with your soul.
We face each other at opposite registers
while the Trader O's and bread loaves float by.
One time I saw him outside Traders,
He tapped me on the back and I almost flung back and slapped him. BAM
He said it was good to see me at work...
At ten in the morning no one shops, people have lives.
I ask him across our lanes if he drives a motorcycle, he looks like he does
He looks up to the ceiling smiles, “I’ve ridden on one,
But I don’t drive. “Why?” I need to know.
He scratches his head and squints, this is going to take awhile,
“When you drove an MRAP for four years, I’m not really into driving. I hate to drive.”
He tells me how to bag faster, how to do everything better, it’s intense.
At TJ’s I am the sample queen,
I’m chopping the melon with my butcher knife; I chop those bitches to bits,
It’s weird how much I give away with a genuine smile, only for
those bastards to taste that delicious fruit I handed them
and enjoy it in their mouths
for the moment, then they walk away and don’t pay, or they buy some other
worthier fruit, because watermelon’s so much sweeter.
He leans a shoulder onto my cantaloupe thrown
and asks me, why in god’s name am I so adorable?
I don't look up I just chop, chippity-chop
I ask, why in god’s name would you ever give me a knife?
He turns and walks laughing all swaggy.
When we’re bored at the register, (because who is excited by registers,
besides me when I drink enough coffee to make it an adventure,)
he tells me a joke. He says “Why does Snoop Dog carry an umbrella?”
I glare at him. “Because ery’time he goes outside it rains cash and the cash is fuckin green.”
Nah, he says, “cuz it’s drizzling.”
Mine was better.
He asks if he can make me dinner, he asks what I like to drink,
what he should buy
what I want to eat, do I not like meat? We’re on the phone
I love meat, but I say “I don’t like questions.”
He says “Do you like steak, linguine with shrimp, do like cheeseburgers?”
I say “I like butter, ice-cream, and hanging up.” Click.
I’m ringing at the register and he taps on the window with this huge smile,
I drop the bag of chips
And flip him the bird,
the ninety-year old woman sitting in her poor wheelchair
stares up at me; absurd, poor little lady, we were having such a sweet conversation.
My ex-boyfriend used to drop his R’s at me, he'd call me his “tradah ho”
I never minded it, till I did. This is what the other guy calls me: Kate.
When I am drunk, I text him, oh god, drunk texts are retarded children:
they just happen. Chill out, we’re all retarded, and if you’re still offended,
then never mind, stay out my poem. I say: “I’m sorry I’m mean. You can make me your little dinner.
But only if you sit ten feet away from me and laugh at all my shitty jokes.”
When I walk to his house, because we live on the same street
He is sitting in a chair with a roll of measuring tape, measuring out ten feet.
I sit and we eat. I say “I’d like to murder you, but you have to get closer first, halfway closer.”
So he slides back the tape five feet and swings his chair over, sits still.
“I’m sorry I’m mean, I’m not always, I didn't use to be, I don’t know.”
He says “you’re not mean, you're not always mean, get used to it, I know.”
I say hug me and he wraps his arms around the air,
The air is bare but somehow I’m there.
And then we stare, from our two chairs
And I smile so big I want to eat it,
I want to eat my own scrunched up pink chinks,
I laugh so hard my teeth break, and then I sigh
I kiss him so nice in my mind.
You bring out the courage in me
the beaded sweat down flushed cheeks,
the slur in me, for the sake of the spin.
You bring out the monkey rage,
the stumble and rumble of a fist-beating chest.
You bring out my last sip,
my head tipped back and the kicked crushed
can, the character of a man I wish I was in me.
But you bring out the secret and the
stupor and the smile, the electric chair
the eccentric fashion style,
you bring the pure sugar out of me, the whirl of
allure, the girl, the inevitability of the girl in me,
you bring out her so sassy, she who leaps into your arms
fast, the belly-laugh,
the tackle the tenacity, the wide-eyed love you have for me,
you bring out the duck sauce, the rainbow fingered
polish of paint gloss.
The fresh lemon zest, products of unrest
you bring out the best. The kid
It’s you bits, you bring out the lust in me
the trust for strangers and the thrust in me,
the slut the strut, the sucker luck
the shine of invincibility,
that young god swagger unflawed bitch you're in the building
I AM in the front yard
gangSTAR rapper in me, when no one keeps up after me.
You bring out a head-turning roar
world war four, I am
that Mary Magdalene whore,
the one who held up the liquor store,
you bring out the skinny girl
her finger in a hair twirl
the hocking spit
the wit and hissy fit in me,
a supernova, sensation of identity.
I know her. I know them.
I saw her grasping her seat, twitching coffee in
her grand mal seizure grip, the cup trembling like a vibrator
stuck on the ON. We can’t turn it off;
don't ask because we don’t know, why.
Some girls use dirty toys like that for pleasure,
for others, they shake us real bad everywhere else. The ones like us they
buzz like bees
and the climax stings so psycho.
About April, the one I won't never call "victim"
Her coffee, it splashed onto her jeans, and the New Yorker
and everyone stared.
I think I am the only one in the room, who knows
it wasn’t her mistake, or intention.
Sometimes she’s just still,
sitting like some ordinary, pretty face girl on the T,
as I turn to catch the window blur blaze
I latch her eyes by accident, they hook mine like fingers,
and her eyes wander up like them too, the way fingers do,
creep crawling up under a skirt
Those eyes they wonder, I catch her worried wonder
then I watch them gape.
There was this girl I saw who tucked her hair
behind her ears at the supermarket, she was buying soap.
This is when I am a wreck, when I am aimlessly roaming
aisles wondering what kind of day I will create.
Will I buy cheesecake or the carrot sticks? Decisions are mean to me.
Yes, fine, I will just buy the
fucking cake with the cheese and the euphoria
and stuff myself sick like a kill.
I peek up at her again in the frozen foods
her fingers gliding through her strands so slowly
they seem to be dying off her cheek
in a slow release, her heart a stabbed soldier, just barely alive, kneeling back heavy, just barely dead.
Now she is staring at cereal and I follow to tilt my head like I’m looking for my Fruity Pebbles.
Her knuckles, they hold her ears, cloaking them
as if she can still hear the hungry heat of his breath on them, like a clock. Stop ticking,
she’d ask to no one and Nothing answered back,
Nothing said, “I will spin forever.” because time never stops and clocks,
they don’t finish, didn’t you know that? Like some guy who promised to do you real
good, babygirl
then he can't get it up anymore, oh the embarrassment,
embarrassment like reading James Joyce Love letters, The most vulgar human I've never known.
fascinating, oddly. And then comes the obvious
grit guilt, shitty shame, it's all so predictable and all so the same.
Or I am just watching TV, some monotonous made-for-TV-movie about prostitutes
and how they are misunderstood. She is that stripper, there she is, see?
Her name is Roxanne or something like that. She's wearing that dress tonight
the one that will come off as red lights spin across the flesh of her
spins, spreading her legs cheap in persuasion, or she is flipped over
into the shape of a heart, her eyes up expectant, the eyes behind her narrow
her tongue hanging out like power, the way she arches her back up again
she is a platter. She doesn't care
if it is wrong or if it is right. She wants it.
Sometimes at night
when I am sleeping in my own goddamn bed...
I see her again. That is the worst, it’s rusty it hates it hurts.
I’d rather dream of road-trips or fame but she just stares at me
from the ceiling light that flickers unfixable, I turn and turn the bulb
but it stays fucked up and so pathetically stuck. This is my luck.
and she won’t change her appearance, that rotten grin,
she’s in me like bad genes from two jellyfish. Here she is before:
She still has her long night tee-shirt on
the one that covers her knees, not yet stung by bees, ouch and ouch and ouch, they’ll find
the soft spots of body to sting, swarming in through the woods like My Girl,
(It was all just an accident Vada says to herself to comfort her nightmares, but she knows
it is a lie.
Thomas-Jay went looking for her mood ring; death was all her fault, and forever like
time, the word we spit on.)
The girl she is fresh from a bath
she is waiting to fall asleep on the couch with the red flower pattern.
Her eyes are still puppies but their pupils see a missing Mother,
who is oblivious, enraptured, trance-dancing giggling into her Father's eyes
Her skin soft the way it never stays,
or like lingerie. Soft but does not stay.
The basement it is so dark, so black it is visible.
makes me feel weirder
than Easter. Days like these
I just want to stay inside
or out the church. Which is worse?
Belief is bitter and bites
when you don't have any.
These long distance runners, they
sense an end, complete, beneath their sneaker
feet. They piss their pants but keep racing down Beacon Street,
their chin up holding on, to what it is I need to know most.
My Father runs the marathon but walks
with a limp, his back is bad and we all know it is
without him saying a word. There is no stopping him. I get moving fast, I like
to move like that too, only never in one straight,
beginning then end line, I must only spin, sinny spinning
and I also break before the finish. Some nights
my Mother prays to Saint Anthony for me, oh dear god
she is so good and gullible. I could laugh.
She asks him to find my faith to find my stride.
I'll never understand. Everybody cheers
everybody kneels down to touch something greater
I can't see is there, air is only air, airless and bare.
I want us all to stop, these once-in-a-while days.
Can we celebrate bread? You can eat it
It makes you feel full and then you live.
These loved holidays un-love me like perfection
or that fleeting satisfaction of sex
I touch but can’t see; it’s so far! Like the man I loved
who left me, the worst kind of astronomy. He was perfect, in my eyes.
Like straightness and distance- all that I am not.
So this is how I feel about Marathon Monday today, about Easter Sunday:
The only time anyone should ever be running
or praying is when they are walking straight towards me.
Kate Wisel lives in Boston and attended Emerson College. Her poem "The Afterthought" has been published in Breadcrumb Scabs magazine. Kate is interning at Grub St. writing school this summer.
ISSUE:
S U M M E R
2011
MINI MAYHEM:
TALES TOLD BY
TOY SOLDIERS
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