in cars, we all forget
the windows. on my windshield, bugs
like fireworks, and through them,
white em dashes pulling forwards. this
is how we see the ground
on a warm day, or maybe a humid day, as if
there are puddles receding, as if i know.
when i came home, i felt
the wetness of your eyes in mine and i couldn’t
move. i would sing so much
more if you couldn’t hear me.
Butterflies only live for two
weeks and most
of the stars we see are dead. How
on earth are we on earth? How do we look
in eyes and know there are thoughts
happening behind them, deep
in gray matter. You touch
my skin because yours is covered
in dark hairs. You touch mine, covered
in bumps, hairs proud on them. Your hands
are what you live through and a finger
on a butterfly’s wing will kill
it sooner. We are trained to leave
the caterpillars alone. We are warned
at eight years old that roly polys will hide
in balls from our nails and
we will still poke them and catch
butterflies in jars, no holes, know
no better. Most of the stars
are dead because even light
cannot get here fast enough. I remember hands
cupped around fireflies. I remember lift off.
the building doesn’t sleep. and i’m not saying that because it is always filled with people, filled with feelings of feet in floor
we talk about the hamsters that we think are hiding
in the radiators, a clunk and an exhale. their drums are louder than the music.
outside, the crack crack crack of balls on bats. i wonder if they are wood, if they are metal, if they hit the ground fast enough. run. i know what it means to have callous. we use pumice to try and rub it away and can’t
and can’t we close the ceiling? there are little spigots of allergies all over the ground. like dancing fluff, they fall from outside in with winds
the windowsills are big enough to dance on. once, we found a baby bat dead there, we thought, but the next day he was gone
once, i knew i found a baby bat dead in the grass, its little lump of fur and folded wings and i tried not to
here, bottles that no one remembers opening. popped tops have been missing for years and so they are instead wrapped in red string, wrapped over, wrapped over, wrapped like weavers wanting to touch a curve
in the dark, we cannot find the lights
we cannot walk here
we must not look in the mirrors so much
how did i ever write like this? all i want to do is listen to the Arcade Fire. all i want to do is pretend i have the most gut-wrenchingly beautiful voice and sing it—the crown of love has fallen from me—no instrumental back-ups. i will forget how low these tones can go. the way i sound when i’m sad, because i wanted to know and then i knew. there is no remedy for this. i think about the obituaries in the newspapers that look like ads. use your pretty fonts, please, do. and a photo from when a loved one was young. i have been documented since i was born and my face is not my face. i share. you see this and you do not see that i deleted everyone that didn’t work out. all i wanted in the world was to tell my mother at 2 a.m. that i want a family photo. we assign this to next time. we look so much at our hands because we do not know the backs of them at all.
who would write my biography?
i am a mess of last
names. this one, attached
because something had to be.
i ought to be at the end
of the alphabet but instead i curl
my e’s, little loops that squeak. my
mother will be changing her last name and tonight
i thought of making up my own, like
cheance for chance, but french, or feles
for cats. i don’t know how
to say any of these words.
*
i have been watching the crease
in the middle of me. from collarbone
to tummy, you touch with two
or three fingers. i find the cartilage
that would break if my heart stopped
beating. “they almost always
throw up,” the instructor said. i have
been trained to do this with the heels
of my hands. the latex gloves
seem always filled with flour
i want to tell the birds to go
home. they whistle like music, like
dancing, like i can’t stand it
right now. the chords in my throat
are sore. slowly,
the sun is pulling all the planets in
for a group hug. in a million years,
it won’t matter that the fuzz
of me existed in day. the sun will
not be out when the six o’clock bells
shudder in churches.
I know guts. I know soft
pink on the sidewalk, little you
who never had a chance. We have big
feet in bigger shoes, and the only people
who look at the ground when they walk
are the ones who are sad. They
stepped over you, who flooded
from earth, couldn’t help it. I know
organs because a teacher
once said to use them like muscles. Contract
liver. Stretch intestines. Do it
like the cords in my hands that move
when I move. Thumbs
jump on black screens. I can’t
step around it all when there is
so much
In a town of 35,000, the 24-hour diner is a late-night hotspot for college students, a watering hole for retirees and a gathering place for families after church on Sunday mornings. Eleven of my reporters and editors spent 24 hours in Galesburg, Illinois’ Broadview last weekend. Check out the project here.
hey i did this and it was great. i talked to a guy who had seen justin timberlake and a guy who beat up 7 other guys and a guy who explained stripper culture to me.
They look like sticks, you say. You pinch
and it wiggles, squeezes top into bottom, bottom
into top, and who knows
which is head, which tail. You drop it because
gross. It—he—
cannot slide away quickly
enough, and you have rocks. And he
has seven hearts, and if you make six slices
he’ll live, wriggle, multiply. You think
you are making friends. When you grow
up, you will forget this, but you will
say you did not forget this. When
you grow up—when you wear the same
shoes until the tops lift off the bottoms, when you go
to bed earlier, when you always
are walking into the wind—you will
watch where you step
in beer pong, we call this heating
up. it swells the head, encourages
touchdown dances, like i’m on
the field, like i’m on one knee
taking a moment to thank the skies. like
they did anything. my roommate left
the windows open yesterday, and
i put my cold hands on
the broadness of your back. you laughed,
you shrinked away, and i warned you
about this. we have both
cried in my bed.
