First (second draft)

This is a second draft of a poem that was originally in a sequence.

First



In the hot tub everyone was nearly naked, my skin
screaming pink from the steam, heat. The snow just starting
to fall so we threw each other
in and out of the bubbling water, yelling
from the shock of cold—
hot, then cold. White flakes dusted her black hair,
in every part of its braid,
in her long long lashes.

They dared us to kiss. They chanted, fists splashing
to the rhythm—Do it, do it, do it. Wincing,
my white fingers on her brown neck I slid my tongue
into her vacant mouth.
She wouldn't close her eyes—she stiffened.

I'm sorry. We toweled off,
silent except for the laughter in the next room
and the cotton dragging against her skin and water
drying. Her braid trailed her turned face
reminded me of a dash in a sentence.

Her mouth moved on its own this time,
but I only heard, First.

Untitled. For now, Sleep.

He's asleep, his mouth wide with the fury of an idiot. Dulled
by the chemical soup of sleep, the muscles in his face lax
lacking any tension, no winks or twitches--stasis
except his roving eyes, which wander over the inside of his eyelids.
His long lashes closed together like a Venus fly trap.

His lungs pull the air into his gaping mouth, I watch.
I could say anything in his ear
my hand a fetter to his wrist
still
bound.

Untitled. For now, The Bees.

The bees were gassed out of their hive.
They used to live in the outer wall of our apartment,
the one with the big window
that opened like a sore on our living room.

They fell onto our carpet, struggling in the haze
of chemical confusion. Every twitch
blurred by dying cells.

He scooped their little carcasses off the carpet
and threw them into the trash. Their wings
and exoskeleton must have scraped
the plastic trash bag

and though they did not intend it,
this sound said hush.

Parchment, new poem

Parchment

There were three of them, boys,
and while I was laying on top of a wide wall
where couples kissed, ditched school

one of them sat on my chest, and I laughed
tried to push him but I had no hands—

he pulled down my shirt and with a permanent
fine-tip pen he wrote on my chest, even
on the skin stretched right over my ribs, as if
he was etching into glass.

To expand my chest with breath was to push
against the sharp tip; to writhe
was to have him press harder, to ensure his writing
clear.

What did he write? WORDS, WORDS, WORDS.
It was summer and I had no sweatshirt
to cover them. My mother asked
what was all over me as I walked to the shower.

Scintilla

Scintilla


There is a service lamp hanging
from the hook in the hood of his Chevy truck
and they, man and woman, are half-seated
on his fender

talking in the lamp-light, like two exposed
and frayed wires, about to touch.