Topiary Or Accident

LITTLE BEAST
Richard Silken

1

An all-night barbeque. A dance on the courthouse lawn.
        The radio aches a little tune that tells the story of what the night 
is thinking. It's thinking of love.
                                                        It's thinking of stabbing us to death
and leaving our bodies in a dumpster.
      That's a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey kisses for everyone.

Tonight, by the freeway, a man eating fruit pie with a buckknife
        carves the likeness of his lover's face into the motel wall. I like him
and I want to be like him, my hands no longer an afterthought.

2

Someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure.
        I'm sure you remember, I was on the phone with you, sweetheart.

3

History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
                History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
                                                        History is a little man in a brown suit
      trying to define a room he is outside of.
I know history. There are many names in history
                                                                                  but none of them are ours.

4

He had green eyes,
                                     so I wanted to sleep with him
      green eyes flicked with yellow, dried leaves on the surface of a pool--
You could drown in those eyes, I said.
                                                                                  The fact of his pulse,
the way he pulled his body in, out of shyness or shame or a desire
      not to disturb the air around him.
Everyone could see the way his muscles worked,
                                     the way we look like animals,
                                                                    his skin barely keeping him inside.
        I wanted to take him home
and rough him up and get my hands inside him, drive my body into his
      like a crash test car.
                        I wanted to be wanted and he was
very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving.
      You could drown in those eyes, I said,
                                                                                  so it's summer, so it's suicide,
so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.

5

It wasn't until we were well past the middle of it
      that we realized
the old dull pain, whose stitched wrists and clammy fingers,
                                                                                  far from being subverted,
had only slipped underneath us, freshly scrubbed.
                Mirrors and shop windows returned our faces to us,
        replete with tight lips and the eyes that remained eyes
                                                and not the doorway we had hoped for.
His wounds healed, the skin a bit thicker that before,
      scars like train tracks on his arms and on his body underneath his shirt.

6

We still groped for each other on the backstairs or in parked cars
                                                                                                as the road around us
grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through the glass
           already laced with frost,
but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of
                                                                                                                lullabies. 
But damn if there isn't anything sexier
                                     than a slender boy with a handgun,
                                                                                  a fast car, a bottle of pills.

7

What would you like? I'd like my money's worth.
                                       Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this--
      swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood
on the first four knuckles.
                                                        We pull our boots on with both hands
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do
                is stand on the curb and say Sorry
                                                         about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

from Richard Silken's Crush
recommended by Sean Patrick Mulroy

I LIED WHEN I PROMISED MYSELF NO MORE LOVE POEMS
Adam Stone

He thought because i never mentioned it
that i did not notice the scars
                                    How he drifted to
the opposite coast of the bed before
crying his own stupid
ocean away from me

History books are edited
                                conversations 
                                biased documentaries
                                based on generations of unreliable narrators

We loved like elementary school
                         history teachers
too lazy to research
which isn't to say we didn't want the best for each other
But should we rather the pay raise
                                      the praise of higher test scores
                                      the happy students or
                                      the truth?

He had scars I don't remember precisely 
how they constellated His body shook but i don't remember
the rhythm or why sometimes when i 
stretched to him i did not reach

I do not think the bed was too vast for comfort

​Every supermarket is frozen food
                                      refrigerated juices
                                      pet supplies and paper products
                                      cereal aisle
                                      juice and soda
                                      canned goods
Generations atlased out a
logical progression of aisles that i have never bothered to
understand but have learned to expect

I don't remember the colors of his eyes
                                what he was wearing
                                whether his hair was topiary or accident
                                the first time we lazed our eyes at each other
Sure the pattern of his chain link spine
                              into my chest i remember
July 3rd at the pool where he thought he saw his mother
in my back yard

There were probably fireworks too I could tell you they
reflected in his eyes because they must have That's how eyes
refract or reflect Our understanding of anatomy was so
wrong that summer As we pushed our bodies into something we
never understood but whose
absence always laid out when i search my bed for
the promise of sleep