When I Ask My Ex How It Was When I Left, She Tells Me “Like You Died but Were Still Alive”
The only time I’ve felt the soft kiss
of any form of death was in a car
accident which ordinary so damn
ordinary enough so to almost be
overlooked amongst all the possible
deaths within the daily rise-&-grind
we like to call today & then today
I remembered the collision Damn
it feels so erotic now the split
seconds of the sharp left in which I let go
of any question of whether he would shoot
the gap through oncoming traffic & instead
of watching the pick-up truck crumple
his car I turned away I turned my gaze
forward I accepted the clap of metal
on metal only feet in front of me
I shattered the passenger window
with my face & as expected then came
the darkness we talk about but can’t really
grasp like fish speaking of space two layers
of clouded air & blue light to separate
the cracks & crevasses of the strangely known
I heard him call me from very far away
I heard him scream my name my body
beginning to learn itself once again blood
flooding each muscle & then the sum
of the space I held as a teenager
locking up my body a jaw clenched
yet trying not to shatter & my name
again & again the whine of my name
pouring into some part of me opening
my eyes I saw my lap full of blood
seatbelt taut against my leant torso
All I could say all I could say was Fuck
the red dripping down my face I heard him
breathe out & say I thought you were dead I
thought I killed you & the weighted world crept
back into the periphery totaled
two-door on Dixie Highway sirens cutting
through the air the ordinary form
of woken living settling back
into the normalcy of afternoon
light after none of the empty boundaries
between my self & being every–
thing lived as boundaries but as doors
I could open & shut in a furnished
House home in which I sit on the floor still
hearing my name called over & over
Aesthetic Fragments in a Box
A single divine Good morning nested against the railing, view
partial of my current politics. Scrap paper housing newness
A couple old quotes, the cartography of our wheel spinning gold
strands amongst all the slowly graying hairs. Coffee, black: what carried
me into you. Precisely six screens in a single cell, each tucked
in a see-through church (And all of ’em on — Perhaps a nice meta-
phor for capitalism.) New neighbor with six icepick scars. Light
yard movement (cold winds from the North). On the hand-ball court, five
men from three sets. Laughter with undercurrent: a choice (polite):
more scars or packed bag, quick trip to Seg. & still the morning shout-out — Guess
whose birthday it is! Flushed cheeks at breakfast & after, still. Letter
with your body with my body blooming inside. Wet everywhere
irreducible life. Hardness held close as room full of students
fills up paperwork (I hear you talk about her, school, everything
… it’s like, what are you doing here? You don’t belong). Brimmed bowl of food
from Cash Flow Donny (now immortal in verse): red, green, brown, white, orange
yellow plethora. Dusk rubbing herself all on me, my weakness
made timely. Dreaming up a room where we can unfold unsurveilled.
Constellation of torso as ink on paper — seismic, thermal
& still symbolic. String of moments in which there is nothing left
to say but Goodnight, yet, here, there is only silence & breathing.
Hard body in rest: slipping away, then, slowly, closer, warmer.
At Thirteen
I wanted a beard, wool cardigan
for my weak chin, jaw cloaked in black
lip hatted with its winter cap. I love
to speak of her, yes her, with lust
& coldness, even now, as my crown
jewel snatches herself back, two hairs
turning toward the oceans of age, the gray
pattern of my life unfolding again:
gain the walled city, dilute the empire.
I ran from my blood–
line, I see
that now. White dudes called me “Wigger”
my pants sagged, my hat on tilt. Black dudes
scoped my eyes & called out “Chinaman!”
So, I flipped pounds & lifted steel
& talked slick, stacked my stories
on top of one another like cards
on a table full of backpacks & hands.
I struggle to meet frailness
with grace. I still run.
Broken American Crown
I. September 1997: My Mother’s Father Recounts a History Living Within Him Yet Not His Own
To waken the Earth, he would flood the air
Lolo once told me of a young peasant
from his native Pangasinang
who’d run through the wet fields at dawn, feet bare
from night, who’d shout & sing songs of days
filled with love & grain & thieves. Until one
morning silence loomed heavy as a gun
& soldiers lit the bright green fields ablaze
to smoke out the boy with songs of legends
& the skin to become a peasant-king.
Lolo said, The boy runs, somewhere, still. [Then
laughter as gunshot or maybe as pill.]
II. October 2001: My Father Falters at the Edge of His Interrupted Life
The laughter as gunshot, needing a pill,
he listens to the young lovers flirt, touch
each other’s wrists in the booth behind him,
haze of a cigarette hung like so much
loose silk from his soon-ex-wife’s shoulder. Thrill
is gone, soon October, too. Where to go?
III. November 2004: I Watch My Father Attempt to Burn Leaves
Each strand of leaf
ashed itself amongst the trees. We had tried
to contain it — Derek at flank, the brief
barks of my father to tighten our hold.
(But I had to stay close: evening so cold.)
Father looked at me, the fire he started
torching through the veins of the rented land.
I sprinted down the long driveway, the sound
of sirens cracking the wind, phone in hand.
Psalm: O flame, help me lay my body bare
to waken the Earth, to flood the air.
***
Portrait of Justin Rovillos Monson by Lisa Lee Herrick
