Hahahaha
Sometimes, waking up is the worst: shower
tie
coffee
work.
Other times, it’s coming home:
kids
dinner
smiles
sex.
I look over my once-glowing wife at night, and I see her nipples, swollen from the newest burden’s suckling, the bruise-y stretch marks on her sides and at the top of her thighs, and I can’t help
cringing.
What’s the good of either of us
going anywheres without the other one now?
-Ethan to Mattie
Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome
Notice how Zeena looks when you open
the door in the morning and your hard back
flexes. You invite her in—she attacks.
“The silver ribbon in your molten,
brown hair. It hurts me to look at those lips
in the winter,” you said. Come die with me:
fast, into the elm; melt in our icy spree.
The snow, our heaven—the tree, an eclipse.
We lived. I saw you there slumped in the cold,
your fleshy hands red and vulnerable
against your black peacoat. There it ended.
I lied limp watching your tears freeze and drip.
Dark swathed my eyes, my head pregnant with dread,
the wet bark our new failure’s company.
The old woman sat, cold in the chair
near the door and, absentminded, fingered
an odd string on the mint-colored frock she
wore all the time now. Her jowl hung loose
to her frail, liver spotted collarbones.
She fell asleep. Watery slobber streamed
along the folds of skin and collected
crust nestled among the prickles of iron
hair. Her little blue veins throbbed a bit in
in her neck with each drub of her heart. Now
she was lucky her blood even bothered to
slither through the faltering vessels at all.
The sun blazed outside, hot on the glass
of her only window. Her portrait hung
just to the right, her then-dark mane well-kempt,
her shoulders back. One icy gasp of air
shocked her awake, though her eyes were too cloudy
for it to matter. The light continued
to invade the room, causing her pupils
to recoil. She closed her eyes again, swishing
her withered tongue around, feeling where teeth
used to be, making a noise as vile
as a plunger. The damp smell of decay
penetrated everything- the bed,
the green clock, the taxidermic deer.
There, beneath the watching eye of the judas hole,
she died in her old, limp, filthy glory.
Clammy air from the Neuse
envelops me with unnecessary warmth,
and sweat waits on the fringes of my pores
For me to move.
I got your last letter yesterday.
Then I sailed and dropped
It down into the soup of fish and rocks
And, heavy, it sank.
It sank, along with your father’s
old regatta shirts, full of holes,
the blue one I wore with the fishing pole
on it. That day, in the water
I told myself I would never be the same.
Wind thickening my hair with a salty coat,
and me, alone in the sea on this boat—
Inside, I felt inflamed
as I did when I was wrapped in your arms.
The smell of your clothes
still lingers on my skin; remember those
days when we charmed
each other, hearts
beating close. Tangled in my bed,
We spent hours dreading
The next time we’d be apart.
Now, I’ll try being alone.
The sun slithers down as I furl
my Sunfish, and I ache to be curled
up with you: naked, unposed.
My pink throat burned
with that last sloppy,
singeing, mind-numbing
shot. You made me do it.
Outside was dark. Blackness
pooled like water on concrete.
Maybe you looked hard at me
with your whiskey eyes
when I couldn’t stop kissing
your mouth, your face, your neck.
Fingertips throbbing light,
hot against my skin— you
grabbed me back. When will you
realize it wasn’t a mistake?
Since [writing] is your religion,do you
know what you will be asked when you die?
I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions.
Were most of your stars out?
Were you busy writing your heart out?
-J.D. Salinger
from Seymour: An Introduction
Were most of your stars out?
The typewriter squeals as I turn the knob.
Were you busy writing your heart out?
My mind writhes like intestines and shouts,
each word stinging: wrong or malaprop.
Were most of your stars out?
I jam the keys down, fevered, not yet unbowed,
But I know every phrase is already wrong.
Were you busy writing your heart out?
These screaming, inky squiggles won’t be loud
enough, marring the sheet— thick, black globs.
Were most of your stars out?
If I die tomorrow, unpublished, my spouts
of rambling won’t matter when I’m gone.
Were you busy writing your heart out?
No English majors will stop to tout
my contribution to their lives, to art.
Were most of your stars out?
Were you busy writing your heart out?
I’m trying to force myself out of my cold bed
to an even colder place: the desk where I write.
My desk is where dreams are shot from the womb
in a salty, bloody wreck, then found to be
stillborn. Writers have it the worst of artists.
Even when we’re published, so what?
Everyone else is too. Only our mothers
and professors can see what we create
with the clarity that we intend it to have.
Lovers can pretend, but after the sheets
have cooled, the only warmth in my cheap
apartment comes from my two black cats
named Ezra and Edgar and the prepackaged, vegan
ramen noodles heated in the microwave, against
the packaging’s advice. I sigh and pull the covers back
up over my head, coveting a familiar darkness.
Her disgust was apparent by the way she sat slumped over in church, a snarled look on her face. Lies, she muttered as those around her caught the pastor’s fervor like a fever, bodies swaying, sweat drizzled on their necks and hot, brown faces. Her mother stood too and fanned her mocha skin with her dress hat, the purple one with a white lace trim, wide-brimmed for such an occasion. Her eyes were closed, and she silently bobbed her head with the organ. The girl turned to look out the window as the vibrating murmurs of religious ecstasy penetrated her ears and nose, making the faded, stained glass portraits seem to shake. Outside, she saw skyscrapers and tall women in Chanel suits and Louboutin heels, mingling among the all-too-real burned out shacks and sinewy field hands.
I’ve got to get out of here.
Were most of your stars out?
The typewriter squeals as I turn the knob.
Were you busy writing your heart out?
I can’t take these words in my head and
the blinding virgin paper shouting:
Were most of your stars out?
I jam the keys down, fevered, not yet unbowed,
But I know every phrase is already wrong.
Were you busy writing your heart out?
These screaming, inky squiggles won’t be loud
enough, though marring this sheet— thick, black globs.
Were most of your stars out?
If I die tomorrow, unpublished, my spouts
of rambling won’t matter when I’m gone.
Were you busy writing your heart out?
No English majors will stop to tout
my contribution to their lives, to art.
Were most of your stars out?
Were you busy writing your heart out?
