Lining the street are no
Houses, No
shops, No
gas stations alive with the hum
of bright signs, or the noise
of busy pumps. No shuffle
of tired feet
on the gum-stained sidewalk,
No unbridled laughter.

Standing in the street, is
you.
You with your black camera,
Your back to me,
Swaying like a lone balloon tethered to a mailbox
in an unnoticed breeze,
Or like an homage
to the trees that you couldn’t save here.

I feel you feel me padding my way up the pavement,
Toward you.
A slow turn and a tilt of the head to the left,
You unveil a display of teeth.
Unimpressive, I think,
Your poor rendition of a smile.

With seven steps, I eclipse your celestial body, and watch
To see if you’re awash with glow…wait
To see if I concede to your gravity.
As both science and history could tell us,
I do.

And seven steps below your lauded orbs of sight,
Jerks to life the corner of your mouth.
And then it comes,
Softly, like a sigh of wind after a sonic boom:
Your voice.

“Strange, isn’t it?
The death of a parade — Always…
…But no one ever watches that;
By then, their mouths are full of turkey.”

But those words are not for me.
No, you’re only speaking through me,
To something even the trenches of my mind
Dare not comprehend.

Your lips meet to compose a subtle curl — serene,
While I gulp down ancestral fears,
I try to focus on how you’re beautiful, not like
A beach sunset, but like the glisten
of dog piss on healthy grass in sunlight.

And still I see it, as my arm
Travels the lightyears between us,
Just to establish contact
With your craterless cheek.

Beneath my touch, you relent;
Warmth, honest as raw earth spreads across your face,
And the words that come, they come for me:

“And when we die,
There will be nobody watching,
Nobody will see…
But now, it’s time for our picture.”

To the camera in your hand,
You offer all the length of your arm
So the lens can find:

Your dirt-dark hair, longer than I can stand,
Hanging lazily about that peculiar face,
wherein lie
Your eyes, the color of Neptune,
Surfacing on the smooth sea of your bronzed skin.
And behind you, a glimpse of asphalt, bleached by the merciless sun,
The curtain of dusk being pulled over the shoulders of the horizon.

And me,
(Or some semblance of)
Blurred,
Formless,
As I walk out of the frame.

years before anyone
notices, before one of the workers
sees a tuft of green beneath
a nickel box Honda.

Even then, nobody expected anything but weeds.

The young tree, knowing nothing
of the thirty-some shades of rust or
gravity’s quiet, oppressive hand, felt

the sun through busted floorboards
and ruptured right on through. Oh,
how it wore that car like a necklace!

The dented fender pointed up
and east, as if ascending an imaginary
mountain.  The drooping tires hanging
from the branches, graceful as moss.

The workers, who
were used to seeing things die

built a fence around the car
that was now a tree

and declared it a sacred monument,
a reminder that even broken clocks
are right twice a day, and the holy

flowers in mud, flower
in mud.

This isn’t the right way to tell you, my young love,
but I want to feel it’s warmth with all of my toes
and slyly rub my beardless chin into it.

In light of long contemplation – useless attempts to flee
my desires. Late night. You surely sleeping. A candle
burning on the table – I see, I must ask.

This is a most hasty avenue to reveal these savage thing
to you, a pure woman, but I want my apprehensions
regarding your beautiful clavicle to rest.

And lest you be uneasy, this you only need consider –
my love is the sweating passion of a negro singer.
There is no reason to fear my swooning.

We will depart to the civilized Russia of Peredelkino,
a village free of turmoil, and mustachioed women
who may kidnap you for their brothels.

I’ll ride to meet you as midnight snows on my coat.
And I’ll knock six times with the skin of my forehead.
All to embrace the miracle of your clavicle.

My teeth were still misaligned
my mouth thick with surgical padding,
from the first of three molars
that lost their way to the jaw
somewhere in the bowling-ball slick
of palate and sinew and bone.
We did not kiss, I was too sick
with anesthesia and stitches.

But I am not ashamed of sitting
with her naked in my mother’s bed.
The sun made its own picket fence,
shining through the sheets, and
I believed in it too much to worry.

It’s not even a question, why I didn’t tell someone
else. Everyone else is busy scrutinizing my arms.
It’s easy to understand, isn’t it, oh, you are someone
who writes love– but that’s bullshit. I am someone
who has been stupid, and stupid and young, someone
who slept well and often. No, better, I am someone
who stills walks with stupid on my ankles, head up.
I don’t talk about this because even talking brings up
so many nights that weren’t mine to begin with, someone
else’s fucking story, and besides, all I know how to do is yell,
not live, not like, not cry, not in public. Yelling,

that’s easy. Biologically acceptable. Animals yell,
the young are animal. Even the peacocks yell,
and they’re ridiculous. I used to bare my arms,
triumphant. Here is the piece that doesn’t fit. Yell
all you want. I am not here. I am yelling
in the bathroom sink, and I walk high,
still full of stones. My mother couldn’t stomach
it. She forced her fingers under my chin and yelled,
hurt and animal, from the diaphragm, up
and under. How can anyone grow up?

I make mess for myself. It grew up
on its own, but I planned it, precisely. Yelling
is all I know how to do. I hold my head up,
thinking this. Who gives themselves up
first? I have been young, and I am someone
who scheduled my own madness, looked it up
first. I am someone who stands up
on stupid ankles. They’re the worst now, armed
and too tough to cut through. It’s not my arms.
I am someone who hides it better than the stories.
Someone should stop telling the story, should stomach
the end of the lady who swallowed a fly. My arms
don’t flap like wings. My arms are just arms.

i think i’ve lost you. or did you lose me? no one has ever loved me as much as you have loved me. and no one has ever hurt me really, except you, because i love you. no one has broken my heart, made me feel as mean and callous and indebted as you. i don’t know what i owe you, aside from my rent. in the back of my mind, i have always hoped that maybe with a little more work on the house, with better grades, with cleaner dishes, that you would be proud. i don’t want your help or your pity, i don’t want you to pay off my debt, i want you to love me. 21 years trying to earn your love and now i’m tired. you have brought me up the best you could and brought out the worst in me. you taught me what it feels like to be completely alone. i only ever ran from you to see of you would chase after me– if you would welcome me home when i came home. all i want is to come home and be welcomed back as the prodigal, to have you say that you don’t care about the past because now i am home. i want to have a home.

i have fallen again, fallen in love. i am trying to love a girl. she is beautiful and loved and she has a home. but i am terrified of letting her love me because i know i will have to take the chance that she will give me a new heart. last time i had a heart i didn’t work out so well. so now i can ride a bike but i am not sure i can love. and everytime i fall the failure takes far more from me than the layer of skin i left on our old driveway. now i know why they call it falling in love, because it is exactly like falling. you have no control and it is completely terrifying, and the whole time you are worried about what might happen when you stop falling, when you hit. the fear of falling doesn’t stop anyone, it’s the fear of hitting something that you can’t get past. i am not sure i can get past myself.

i fell for you the way you fell for me the day i was born. you were god to me, strong, commanding, you had a thick black moustache. i am learning about god, but i half believe that when i get to heaven he will have played football for the navy and been voted orlando’s hottest bachelor in the 70’s. i hope He is just like you, because, disregarding all the reasons, resentment, and fear, i still love you, and even though i don’t know why or see the evidence as i would like, i know we are awfully in love.

A lanky black college kid approaches the vacant seat of the man next to me. I tell him that someone’s sitting there. He ignores me. In a few minutes, a short, stout, old, black man, that’s in need of a shave, walks towards the college kid. His face is mean. He says, “Ya sittin in my seat.” The college kid replies, “What?” in a dumbfounded look. The old man repeats, “Ya sitting in my seat.” His deep voice is penetrating. The college kid replies by moving to another seat.

Listening to “Dane Cook” on my Ipod, my dimples are protruding so much that my cheeks hurt. It’s 11:15 pm and we’ve just past Lake City on our way to Jacksonville. The bus is silent and dark. I can hear the faint whispers of the passengers that sit behind me. Directly behind me, sits the same old man that had the encounter with the college kid. In a deep voice, he blurts out, “Ow God…please forgive me of my sins.” I shudder. “This dude is crazy!” I think. He repeats, “Ow God…please forgive me of my sins.” I lean forward and cover my eyes with my hands.

Amid the bustle of SUV’s around me, I open the passenger door to my little brother Jonny’s 96 white Isuzu Rodeo. My mom and Drew, my older brother, are seated in the back. They waited an hour to pick me up. My mom reaches over my head rest and tickles my neck. I squirm and say, “Mom stop!” She says, “Ow…come on you big baby.”

We’re on our way to Osprey Hall, the destination of Jonny’s dorm, in University of North Florida.

To save money, for three days of Thanksgiving Weekend, my family and I are cooped up in Jonny’s dorm room. My mom sleeps in Jonny’s sheet-less bed on the back of the wall. Drew sleeps on the Futon on the side of the wall. Jonny and I sleep in the air mattress in the middle of the room; it gradually deflates as the night progresses.

There is only one real blanket, so my mom receives it. Drew has this red Sponge Bob blanket that’s so short it barely reached past his knees.  And, Jonny and I are each given a skimpy sheet.

It’s cold in the dorm room, but if we shut off the air conditioning, the room gets moldy. Therefore, I sleep with my red and blue stripped Ralph Lauren sweater. My mom sleeps wearing her favorite pair of blue jeans and a Hippie looking shirt, with socks. Drew sleeps in his Joe Boxer pajamas and plain white V-neck shirt with socks. And, Jonny sleeps shirtless with a pair of black Footlocker basketball shorts; he’s apparently adapted to the cold.

We are displeased with Jonny’s living habits. Expired underwear, the Publix brand of Fruit Loops with no milk, and a sink filled with unwashed Dallor General plastic cups and bowls, along with crusty socks that smell, is Jonny’s version of self sufficiency.

The day after Thanksgiving, Jonny suggests we go to movies in Tinsletown and see Beowolf. I kind of want to see Beowolf, too. Within ten minutes of the movie, however, mom has enough. Eyes closed and face contorted in fear, her head rotates forty-five degrees to the right. She refuses to watch anymore.

The next day we drive to the St. Augustine Outlet mall. Ironically, I only buy one item; whereas Drew, who’s usually frugal, buys five to six items. His total is over three hundred dollars. After Drew’s third item, our feet became sore. Drew is determined though and traverses every store. We decide to leave Drew and grab some fruit smoothies in the food court. Finally, Drew’s shopping had ended.

For dinner, we eat at this Hookah restaurant. After appetizers of couscous and pita bread with hummus, we ask the waitress to recommend a hookah flavor. She convinces us to try double apple cherry. Within a few minutes, mom feels a little light headed. She then excuses herself from the couch pillows that we are sitting on.

She comes back from the bathroom with a story. She says that she did her thing in the bathroom and then tried to wash her hands but couldn’t. There was soap, and she lathered up, but both hot and cold knobs for the sink were removed. So she resorted by wiping the soap off her hands with tissue paper; there weren’t any paper towels left.
Arriving at the Osprey Hall parking lot from dinner, Jonny develops a plan. Jonny and mom leave the car first. Mom appears to be escorting Jonny back to his dorm room. After a few minutes elapse, Drew and I head to Jonny’s dorm room. Appearing to be students of UNF, I carry Jonny’s backpack and Drew carries Jonny’s psychology textbook. We walk at a moderately fast rate. Almost up the stairs to Jonny’s floor, a girl approaches. We simultaneously say “Hi” and walk past her, without waiting for a response.

In Jonny’s dorm room, Drew and Jonny whisper because they both have deep voices and the walls are thin. We all then take turns at the bathroom. Going in the bathroom first, mom takes a thirty minute shower. Then Drew showers. Meanwhile, I channel surf the TV. I stick to I Love New York on VHI. Jonny, on Facebook, updates his profile. About five minutes elapse, Drew’s out of the shower. He demands to use the computer. Jonny concedes his seat at the computer for a seat on his bed, next to mom, who’s attempting to rest. Two commercials later, we hear loud snores from mom. Reaching in his pocket for his Blackberry, Drew checks his voicemail. Realizing no one important called, Drew’s body flops on the futon. He’s soon asleep. Then, Jonny and I realize our only light on is from the TV.

Now, our Thanksgiving jaunt is almost over. Jonny is a Resident Assistant of his dorm, Landing. He is told that he can’t leave Landing for Thanksgiving. We have no choice; we are a family and we stick together. Therefore, I go to Jacksonville by Greyhound. Drew flies a connected flight from New York to Atlanta to Jacksonville. And, mom flies from North Palm Beach to Tampa to Jacksonville.