We slept
with my back curving toward
you
and I got used to breathing
with you breathing just beside
me
and though the habit's new
enough,
a night without you
so soon
reveals a change
quicker than any Pavlov would
anticipate.
Now, on my own
I sleep
without rest
like those with impaired breathing:
snore,
sigh.
I. Contracting Blindness
I first fell in love with the director
when I noticed the fine print
on the contract that I had
to sign
in order to play my signature
role in the longest
movie-series ever made.
Fingerprints to pageprints,
eraser free, I swerved
clumsily into the alternative
version and
erupted in goosebumps, as if to mimic
the tiny, mysterious mountains
rising from the page.
Entranced, I searched
the peaks and valleys, awkwardly
index(finger)ing latent
letteresque pattern formations.
Lost in translation, I suddenly
felt blind.
This gig is my one
chance, my own
special movie.
The script is
a little bumpy, b
Nice is different than good. by exhalesigh, literature
Literature
Nice is different than good.
Mother surely knew that
wolves would lurk along
that path.
She had to have known.
For the world is
filled with wolves,
and they especially
tend to cluster
in forests
where little girls
walk alone:
easy prey.
Yet she dressed me
in the color
of raw meat,
filled my basket
with warm-scented goodies
and sent me
specifically
into the woods
to grandmother's house
unconsciously baiting,
conveniently on
red-alert:
all the better to find you with,
my dear.
Still, for years,
I believed
it was wolves
of whom I should
be wary.
I know things now.
Martyrs stream toward old
mahogany mountains
to be(hind) or not
quite in front of a new yesterday--
an obsolete tomorrow--
the clash is the same.
These hills are alive with the sounds
of silence,
populated by the children
who survived
the war learning the new language
bit
by
b
i
t
under carefully assimilated watchful eyes of enemy
soldiers and shooting stars,
or bombs falling
like visitors from
another
world singing softly to
Goghesque ears that hear
what they
see.
The light spectrum bursts,
sprays,
scatters;
a circle stretching from here to here.
We explode as we go.
Subway lines and decaying marshlands
fight to occupy the same chunks of
increasingly dry
space-time, or just space;
the time stopped when they
tied for
the territory.
Now it's just the still aftermath
of a landsc(r)aped-duel that ended in a
violent draw,
littering the battleground with
corpses:
reassembled atoms that have
lost their
tick.
There are isolated patterns, but
even the chorus has stopped
singing.
Watching it is
timely, but
when it's strange,
I'm strange and
I start to think that I've stopped
ticking
Room swirls, black dust. Smoke everywhere. Fog machines, house lights, affected mannerisms like birds on the oak-tree outside the back door. That's where the smokers go during intermission, dreaming of the lemon tea to be had indoors behind the curtain. The cold night air hurts their voices, they claim, and these cigarette geishas need to serenade real soon…
The manic lone ranger breathes in the musty ozone, scented sweat rings in his nose: the familiar stench of rotting rouge and stale mascara, of coughed-up cigarettes and throat-soothing lemon-tea, sheet music and costumes and props. The aromas linger in his nasal cavities, immersing him i
Remote Control Neverland by exhalesigh, literature
Literature
Remote Control Neverland
I'll sit cross-legged
and smile
at your closed eyes, imagining
myself in pigtails
in your dreams
dancing around, wearing a tiny, carefree dress.
We'll throw autumn leaves
at each other like elementary
school kids. I'll kick you
in the shins and pull
on your hair because
I like you
(I DO NOT).
May I have this dance with your brown eyes?
We can waltz to your steady breath,
and keep time with your heartbeat
You'll be leading.
Then I'll spot our reflections, tangled in
the wriggling vines and occasional blossoms
of the fading yellow(ed)
wallpaper in your room,
in a house so old and so clean that the only
things collecting du
I scowl at the crosses, damned banners
honoring good works, the stars and stripes
atop every tall building; and I smile
at the red-cheeked man running for the bus.
At his feet are litter and ice; on the trashcan
a sign reminds us every litter-bit hurts.
It gets even colder.
Do the thinly dressed sit in the cathedral
for solace or warmth? Where do they go
to sleep? I know I'm entitled to nothing
but I don't want to be a democracy
(all never could just be for one
in my attic).
It goes like this: first, the scene where they dangle bread
before the hungry. Then the other
where they applaud loud and long, the scene before
I wake an
We vacationed with gravitas:
burning fires, passion near the
ice box machine, Mexican beaches,
and one long glorious night in
a cabin tucked in the woods
where our sighing chorus started
the coyotes
singing. But the best was when we got home,
our luggage
cuddled in the vestibule,
or the hallway, but it was a vestibule
to us
because it was OUR hallway,
where we threw off our vestments,
which were really
just our clothes
but they seemed like garments,
like raiment,
like habits sorely religious,
which is how we felt dropping them
one by one on the stairs:
white shirts, black bra, blue jeans,
red socks,
star-spangled underw
We vacationed with gravitas:
burning fires, passion near the
ice box machine, Mexican beaches,
and one long glorious night in
a cabin tucked in the woods
where our sighing chorus started
the coyotes
singing. But the best was when we got home,
our luggage
cuddled in the vestibule,
or the hallway, but it was a vestibule
to us
because it was OUR hallway,
where we threw off our vestments,
which were really
just our clothes
but they seemed like garments,
like raiment,
like habits sorely religious,
which is how we felt dropping them
one by one on the stairs:
white shirts, black bra, blue jeans,
red socks,
star-spangled underw