#sharpquill

 “Ailing Heart & Criminal Eyes”

It’s hard, isn’t it,

when the boy who used to make you pray is forcing you to your knees

and you sleep through the holy light that used to wake you up in the mornings

and life is better than ever and you’re still

running out of things to be

grateful for?

    “Boxes & Rings”

It’s hard, isn’t it,

when your one friend with the apologetic

hair is talking about that feeling you get

when you just want to sit down in a

     café and talk to someone random and

     make a new friend but

you don’t actually know what she’s talking about because you always bring books to cafes and

your other friend with the Beanie Baby

     eyes is painting her toes a color

     only gay men will notice

and she doesn’t believe you when you

tell her?

  “Bone Structure”

It’s hard, isn’t it,

when your non-threatening nose and doll-like stature work so hard to make that good first impression but

your hips don’t lie and your mouth keeps moving but

those aren’t words dropping out,

or pearls, or promises,

they’re droplets of hot taffy

scalding and scandalizing and

leaving such a juicy salty taste

"Worry Heart"

Like...

That scene in Home Alone where Kevin talks to the old man in the church, with the kid choir singing O Holy Night in the background, and you know what both of them are going to have to do, but this is before you understood the song.

And like...

Watching it alone in a cold living room with a bowl of plain white rice, but now you know the song.

Like... smooth stone...

Pulsing like it has a heartbeat, if you squeeze it tight.

Like...

Giving something else a lifeblood,

And knowing that you do,

But marveling at the miracle anyway,

Because without it something in you would crack.

"When You Start A Poem Sober and Your Friends Finish It Drunk:"

Have you ever stood under the bridge when the El passes,

Shaking the concrete and the bones and Everything a

] b o y uhkmu g j,

"Horchata, Revisited" or "Now We Both Know" or "At least this one has a title"

...

You thought I was going to let you read the whole thing, didn't you?

That's cute.

...

We’ll be looking at Christmas lights this time next week. If it was last year we’d be drinking horchata and I’d be thinking about the skeletons alcohol brings out in happy people and the way the snow and cold and twinkle seem to drive them back in. We’d be staying warm together, and you’d be laughing, and I’d be falling already, before you’d even finished your drink.

This year there will be silence, as you replay each memory, horrified at the new perspective, and I shrink back to watch you do it.

“I don’t think this will ever have a title”

Traumatizing experiences call for exceptional poetry.

Nothing less.

Yet the best

I can do right now is

something about

the smell of ginger candy meant to ease the nausea and

the way Christmas lights blur when I’m not wearing my glasses.

Time passes

like a wounded animal,

limping along through the small hours,

falling all at once into tomorrow.

No sorrow

of mine ever matched

whatever made you scream

sight unseen

into your clammy palms

Sobbing before God and the snow and everyone

in the bloodiest of languages.

What horrors you revisit at the bottom of a bottle,

I don’t know.

All I know is to pull up the trash can,

              hold back your cross and chain,

              fetch the water and

              pray for morning

With no warning

you collapse like a child and die like a god,

limping along through the small hours,

falling all at once into tomorrow.

I coil your cross and chain on your bedside table.

“The Ganges Is Not Holy Here” (or "Directions for All the Adela Questeds of the World")

  The Real India?

  Oh,

you can get it in a store on Devon where a man hacks the heads off frozen fish on a bloodied counter;

he gives the children lychee candies so they don’t smell the iron.

  Turn left at the corner where the twentysomethings stand smoking by the piles of trash radiating flies.

  Pay no mind to the flaking, outdated movie posters;

Shah Rukh Khan has looked the same for twenty years and he is not the Real India;

  it’s the woman who will cheat you blind while she’s selling you a pair of sandals but will feed you full to bursting if she hears you’ve never had a samosa.

  It’s the elephants and the cows but also the little boys offering to shine your shoes ten feet from a skyscraper where the brokers and bankers move invisible money across entire oceans.

  It is divinity begging on its knees next to sin, and borders built by people from far far away, but they have law and order and nice clothes, so they drew the lines.  You draw the lines. You made the Real India, too.

"Cages"

Your ribs don’t give me much, except my whole self,

but this heart is a timid creature.

This mouth gets loud, and these knuckles too,

but this heart is a timid creature.

Each foot hits the ground

like an elephant found

a new way to break each sound -

And these hips shout

like they want out

of this body they could do without -

This stomach groans, never satisfied,

and you say it looks

like I haven’t tried - 

and yes, this heart, it’s a timid creature,

  but it beats against its cage nonetheless.