Cx72 Poetry: Marie Lopez
October 26, 2020

Your silhouette

I spent the night hearing children fumble with wire cutters. I imagined a volcano overlooking a skating rink, remembered the way your body feels when it's on top of mine. No, you’re not too this heavy this time. In every hollow shadow of pubic hair, I looked for your shoulders, unconfined and applied.

*

The pestilence is at high tide and perculates at noon’s eaves. We have sex while ignoring the parts that get wet and hard. I’m an ignorant cumulus cloud. The soot drips down from empty balconies or violence ensues on Gates Ave., lest we forget we are living on your couch.

*

Can you tell me where to find the letter lost from your name?

*

When there was no you among the crowds there were multitudes. Under the green awning a woman stands and what she means is that I will never be a worker, a fighter or a bug. I nod in every direction. Radiation leaks into my mouth like your spit.

*

When radiation leaks into my mouth like your spit I am usually stapled to a lamp post examining glass water beads on posters of our lost dogs. As if on a hill of new desire. A high frequency ardor surges your lean stalk and it defines risk probability. I remember when spring was blue and green.

*

I listened to you
undressing in the dark
afraid of how you’ll
be described.

Classic lamentations

Some prefer effigies to the real swindle
Others like to seal the stench that rises off of lawn mowers.

We resent everything we cannot bend.

Often we are just waiting around,
Stalling, in the fate of a fat man.

Fireworks made the news
Nothing more true than a fire
To rapture us witness.

Daughters of jesters & village idiots
Love to watch the bumper crops burn.

I rather be a bird caught in a church bell

Instead I’m a cloud rigid with memory

The water doesn’t part when you enter me.

Who are we kidding with infinity posturing
When we all know the most final embrace is that of a pocket mirror

& a person whose name will never appear in print.
Never a fire, always the bride.

Some time ago I was served evasive wishes.
I never listened nor heard.

Perhaps we’re not that cool catatonic,
Rising air.
Did you know warm water can sink?

Maybe they’ll even hear us when we fall.

Woman From The Well

Why expect to be more fantastic than any tree
Or the Blue of Noon

Your nobility transcends grace
And any need to do better

We are merely accepting change
Its cycles, sleep cycles

I imagined icicles on a fire escape before the world burned
And they are beautiful

II.

I can press my genesis from a priest
Holy sacrament from sordid scrotums
Everywhere young
Faces breathing crusts
Of dreams
The city is lit by the single most fire
Plume of labored disorder
Each sabbath signed our eyes
With every morning coin