Under the guitar strings lies a sound
box full of liquor and safety pins with dried
blood on them. The liquor is to forget the safety
pins but somehow they always manage to pluck
my strings and there I go, singing again:
The Low E String is a resonant hum, the purr
of my dead cat, of my father’s engine
(no radio) in the morning, the bass-line
of the first song I got beat up to, the hips
of the first girl I ever dry-humped at a high school
event: we called it dancing.
A, when plucked sunrise, echoes cool water
and rippled kisses, the backside
of the first mountain I ever knocked
the top off of. It is the dissonant rage in
my father’s voice when he finds out that I quit running for something
with a little more freedom; I am not quite
my father’s son. Almost, not quite.
The D String always cuts
my finger and no matter what I sing you can tell
it’s there– the scars on
my legs and the bruises in my eyes,
but sometimes when you’re playing and something
goes wrong, you just have to sing
harder and hope nobody notices
the veins in your neck
bulging like there’s a slip-string noose
going from your bridge to just under your chin.
Strung low, G is my favorite: it is always out
of tune, always flat, too loud,
must be fixed, bent and wound,
toned into position– I often just let it ring
wrong, because there is liberty in dissonance.
Also, I’m pretty tone-deaf.
B is my sister’s logic and affections: sharp.
I feel it point in my palms and brace
my ears, there is a beauty untold in the high-cut
chords of the world on which we stand,
and as she tells me to stop singing,
I understand why she left for Colorado.
There is no High E String on my guitar– my fingers
barely manage five;
I slightly hold my voice on key
one day at a time. A full sound is for people with more
reach in their bones.
The story we’ll tell says we didn’t do it
but here I am hiding on your bathroom floor
They said that I was just another player
but I can’t tell who’s winning am I keeping score?
She doesn’t know, it’s our little secret
but you can see the stories written on my neck,
get your make-up out they’ll never find out
best friends don’t leave scratch marks on each other’s backs
On your phone, your new boyfriend sounds like he’s
six foot two and in love with you
but here we are
the way we are
your hips are on mine but your eyes are so far
And when you’re drunk and you need saving
I’ll be the one you call and I will not come
because we both know if they find out anything
we will both lose everything and then some
Instead I’ll call your new boyfriend
and tell him with a whisper that you’re alone
I will stay up for hours
and dream about what if I had taken you home
On your phone, your new boyfriend sounds like he’s
five foot four and he adores you
but here we are
the way we are
your hips are on mine but your eyes are so far
I’m pretty sure, you love me more
but then again I know how your body lies
and all I have are all these letters
in six different notebooks I’m gonna light them on fire
When you leave, I won’t blame you
it’s not like we have a lot to live for
after all, I’m just another player
and you were just a game, are you keeping score?
There are constellations on your skin that I want to paint over the sky.
When I broke my nose and we kept drinking because sometimes the only way off of the concrete is into a bottle.
When you asked me if I liked smoking and I told you it felt better to at least taste death on your tongue instead of finding it four years too late in the pictures of somebody you wish you could forget.
When I said “nice” I meant “it’d look better on the ground” but beggars can’t be choosers or I’d be on the ground beside it.
When they ask if you believe in God and you tell them there’s no room for faith when you lost your knuckles to the staircase over somebody who doesn’t remember your name.
When you tell me I look nice and my ankles break.
When the television becomes the only reality you can stand.
When the paper falls out of your hands and you forget why you loved the wind so much.
When I go away.
When I keep away.
When I write your name in my sleep.
When the trump card of the universe is spelled in the cuts on my thighs.
When the sounds of breathing are no longer necessary.
When you become the things you long to forget.
The room was empty and the bed was a big as your eyes across the country. I took six steps across carpet and tried to drown myself in white dream linen, imagining it to be what your fingers would feel like on my back. It was too heavy. Nothing I can touch will ever be your breath, nothing I can kiss will ever be your sigh. I woke up to steam from the roof vents fogging the window and my hands shaking like the California Coast; there is somewhere you need to be. Your thighs are the gyres that keep the West windy and I pray to be blown away.
I necked you a song last night;
it’s written in your sighs as they faded into the walls
and the floor holds our debates.
An atlas of our past is criss-crossed with safety-pins
and tacks in the shapes of cursive
letters that spell “r e m e m b e r”
This is on your cheek every time you smile
and I am the only one who sees it.
I am the only one who can see
the lies you put on with your mascara every morning.
But I will put mine on with my sweatshirt and we’ll keep tying knots in each other’s tongues until we have nothing left to say.
We write our past in our own rumbles home.
They told me you deserved it and I asked
if the sun deserves the dark, why the bright?
The car on your head like the throb in your thighs
that motherfucker “knew not what he did”
like a fist doesn’t know what it’s for.
But what can I do
except to read about how the statistics aren’t alright
and the kids aren’t alright
but somehow
you’ll be alright:
I wish I could make you alright.
Once, a friend
told me to just kiss you and force you to kiss me back
a friend said I deserved you
like a piece of jewelry
those earrings you wear that I loved so.
I believed him, but did not act
because I did not believe myself.
Somebody else did,
and that’s why I can feel
your hands shake–
pre-tremor-trigger
when we hug.
Once, a Friend
explained that there is nothing more
to humanity than an equal sign
with a slash through the center,
and I had to go find that other friend
to explain a few things
with my fists.
They knew what they were doing.
Jesus was wrong on the cross.
Everybody knows what they’re doing.
I want to roll you off my tongue
like your hips and your
knees in grass and the blood
in your alcohol and the teeth
of your bite
(you’re drunk or drinking and it makes me want to carry you up a stairwell and tell you all about the rain shadows I live in)
I want to pronounce your body
repeatedly
with imperfect diction
until my mouth has you
memorized the way
my dreams already do
Let’s shout our stars into each other’s shoulders until our voices are out of light.
One time I tried to
kiss-cut a corner
but all I got was a bloody lip
and your perfume was all over my cheek.
When my blood tasted like you I was confused.
When the pantry collapsed and the saltine crackers lined up on the floor
to salute the fight I swear there was singing somewhere.
You told me to never touch you
like a knife again and we cut
a chorus for somethere
into each other’s
backs with fingernails until the night
decided to grey us
together one last time.
When my body shakes now I call it prayer and hope you can’t hear me.
The television screen I type on tells me to stop kissing shoulders but I only how to breathe in skin and sigh.
The stars on the carpet look like birth
marks of memory and I told you
already it’s not
the sleep I’m looking for.
It’s in the waking up.
I want to stop time with you in slanted mornings until eternity or whenever.
Now that I can listen to acoustic
bearded men singing
without grabbing safety pins and
scratching numbers in my legs,
that I can face the morning
without turning
over for your smile,
I am ready.
I wanted to tell you all that time
that I can hear the earth sigh when you lie down,
that the streets of this hidden city sing
when you walk barefoot down the boulevards
Girl,
this place echos without you.
The library basement plays a song
at dawn every day
and I am the only one here to listen,
my bones collapse with the resonance,
because
How do you measure the decibles
of leaving?
I’ve lost my voice from whispering prayers to the wind about you;
that you would return with spring,
dirty calves, and bare shoulders,
I don’t care what color your hair is.
Someday, we’ll wake up
and you’ll know I wasn’t missing you last night.
Someday the sun will rise blue.
Someday we’ll each find some kind of lonely we don’t mind
holding on to.
The buildings will continue to rise.
My hands will continue to tremble.
School will continue to be replaced with booze
and somebody else’s breathing in the morning,
and someday I’ll forget you.
But the sprinklers
and my hands
will never forget
the things they rained on.
