Encapsulation
I stop to buy a necklace on my way
out, one you
won't like, a silver cross, but it
doesn't mean I want
anything more any more than it means
you want to
be a mother when you browse baby
shoes and have
mini-breakdowns over the smallness
of their feet.
There is something so beautiful
about a cross. You
know how I feel about shapes. You
know how I want
to surround myself with symbols.
Somehow, I have to
singe a significance into my skin
and hope to have
stamina enough to hold onto it a while.
Or else my eyes
will search out what is missing,
something you
call my selfish game. I promise I
would never want
to offend by wearing a beloved god
in my attempt to
kick crawling away, but in the dark
it's hard to have
integrity at core, so much core forced out by fears.
Golden shovel: “You want to have
feet. / You want to have eyes. / You want to have fears.” – Jane Hirshfield
Vanity Dance
Vanessa
(the beautiful), bring it back a bit. Vanessa, you
crushed
a glass bottle with a flimsy shoe, but I don't
see
any trace of blood. My knuckles, if I have
not
lotioned, are red-speckled just from exposure to
cold
air. I doubt you ever dry out, Vanessa. You like
to
play with magic, with shape-shifting, but if you gift me
anything,
I wish to sing. Vanessa, I'm not sure you
have
a stronger evil than your song, overheard. It's just
youth,
it's only hair and skin. You are simply asking to have
her.
I am afraid to say anything to your face, afraid to
flood
your limbs back to flippers like a rush of pus let
loose
from a pimple. Stay this you and I will stay this me,
okay?
Vanessa, the ocean is filled with poison, and we keep
feeding
it plastic. A fair warning it is no longer your
pure
haven, needing only power. You must put your body
into
its body with love and match its breath to yours.
Vanessa,
I can smell the deep salt of your throat. It's
like
a deli, overwhelming. Your brine serenading mine.
Golden
shovel: “You don’t have to like me. // You just have to let me / keep your body
yours. It’s mine.” – Lynn Melnick
Beaver, attaching
Dearest,
in the summer will you send me sugar
to rub on my arms? my skin simmers
so bland; when I can hardly focus
because
everyone around me smells like cake
that recurring dream happens & I
kiss
women, I hang sticky from their lips
like insects to a net. moments of
rest.
who can fly all night, my love?
across
an ocean, I insist it never causes
what one might call a problem; the
weather
is bleak but poetic; the city
beautiful
but empty; this child has a fine
mind &
I love her, though I am cold, though
she is
charming in her desperation, I lie
& lie
like a good mother - as if I could
know
what such a job entails! if anyone
could
understand the pleasure of
isolation,
darling, it would have to be you.
perhaps
you are existing somewhere, forehead
furrowed, by a lake, putting your
pretty
words in their pretty order. I
should
almost hate anyone else with their
face
on the stairs, their actuality,
throw
them down like a moth mid-tantrum
fluttering too close. no more wings
in my
eyes, love, no more blending with
this
life. send me sweetness to
administer,
hour by hour. send me your silly
self.
I don't know, again, where the
afternoon has
gone, but the people are sizing
night
with sadness, so restless,
forgetting
themselves with scotch, & I am
happy
as any separated lover can be.
sometimes
a mad sort of despair seizes me
until I remember. I am tired of
going on.
write. send your letters to the
desert.
Yours, forever
unlatched
stop believing in the bondedness of birth. his fingers
jab at your back, tips only, pointy and independent. we'll talk about smiles in
a second. for now you shudder, as if each exact place where he has put himself
in contact with you is a dark cat whisker shed on the bathroom floor. a
mustache crawling away from the face in search of choice branches and shoots
shadowed with the bitterness of stout. [notes on smiles] what's important is
genuine or fake, and there really isn't much of a science to it. you were made
to make light. in photo after photo, you shine and shine and shine. but here
you are off, unplugged, hours past having fled the visual field. and those
eyes, the way they write songs about wrongness and signal private as possible a
sort of plan for saving you, which could go on for years if carried out
properly. stop buying into that theory, the one that goes, you were built for
hate. what happened? nothing happened. you are little, and sulking, and no one
has you. there are a thousand methods for breaking a person and if you remember
this many, how many did you miss? of course you have been chiseled into stone,
ungrateful, hunched. neverwinged and appraising from your perch. of course: oh
god. get me out of here. if in there long enough, you know how you will doctor
the shot. there is no one behind you or beside you. there are only those still
out there, ones who could love you better.
Gray goes to a wedding
Rise in the morning and do not put
on jeans,
because she is getting married.
Once, as a joke, I threw on
black jeans, my formal wear,
to strut the corporate hallways
where I used to spend hours
lessening my visibility: generic
slacks,
fancy-ish tops from department
stores.
Solid colors or maybe subdued
flowers, maybe the hint of a
pattern,
but surely, little to comment on.
I bought a dress,
I text her.
I hope it's okay. It was the only
one
I could stand. It's gray.
It reminds me of Emily the recluse,
I want to add, or Emily
and Keeper. I found the dress
of a writer who never learned how to
know
another human. And now
we're all just waiting
to see what happens and who will be
remembered and how she'll be
remembered.
I stop myself at its color, and she
laughs at me
for even worrying about her opinion,
but in truth, I spend
so little time out of the city, and
so little time out of my home, and
so little time out of pajamas
I don't know,
I don't know
anymore.
After the ceremony, I stand beside
her
for a picture, and we are alight
in each other's company,
stranger that I am, like best
friends. I think
I am saying I love her,
in that weird way
being uncomfortable does.
Process of Elimination
When my wife and I want to find
something to watch
together, I pull up the guide and
start to scroll
through, and at the first sign of a
suitable option
she says yes, that one, and she is
done searching,
whereas I can't be until I have seen
every option,
checked every channel we have to
make sure we don't
miss out on something better. Her
disinterest in
the "something betters" of
life, so healthy and so
content, can make my skin crawl. I
think of this when
I think of perfume, which isn't
often, a rare moment
when someone asks my opinion, what
perfume do I wear,
what is my favorite perfume, and I
have to say none
and what my mother used to wear
(Oscar de la Renta),
what my wife sometimes wears
(Obsession, Calvin Klein),
because these are my only reference
points in a wide
world of scent I have largely
ignored. I think of how
it would go (how it would have to
go), with hundreds
to choose from, how I would select
one, most likely
at random, or based on name,
letters, numerology,
wear it for a month, collect
samples, maybe purchase
a second, switch over for a week,
attempt to detect
a whiff of preference between them.
Something tells me
I would not care, would think, my
skin smells weird
either way, and I am always a little
afraid to eat
my food now, this faint cloud of
lovely poison set
loose about me, traveling when I
travel, ineradicable
as a part of my person now. A
decision one can never
escape from never sits well. If
anything, I require
a perfume that defies physics, one
that would vanish
if I snapped my fingers, with not a
single lingering
drop left behind. A perfume that is
an exact fit for
my essence, and that includes the
part of me that is
a lover of the path not taken (in
this case: no perfume).
I do have, in my hoarded
possessions, mementos
from younger years, a small white
plastic container,
adorned with a flower. The Oscar. An
emptied jar from
my mother's dresser, face cream or
body powder (and
did I ask her for it, or was it
swiped in a moment of
stealth? I suppose it depends on
what degree of sullen
teen I had reached by the time I
tucked it inside
my box of secrets). Sometimes I pop
it open and dip
my nose down and inhale. And inhale.
And all of it,
everything, comes back. If you want
to bring me back,
I have not created a bridge to do it
this way (though
I hope I have built others, even
ones that can only be
accessed by
body), and that alone can give me pause.
Lauren Bender lives in Burlington, VT. Her work has appeared in IDK Magazine, The Collapsar, Gyroscope Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Yes Poetry, and others. You can find her on twitter @benderpoet.