my face is crooked she said
my face is crooked
my face is crooked, you said
and picked up a crooked smile and gave it
to me
like a keychain.
if it would ve been the tiniest bit less crooked,
I d not be talking to that
stupid ugly person.
I d be precisely elsewhere,
and that s unbearable like your
heater suddenly going on full
blast in the middle of the sizzling summer.
so stay here, crooked,
in as much as the distance between us should never exceed
that of mozzarella stretching between two penne before
breaking point.
tramp stamp my mouth, iubito,
vampires can t/ won t chomp on their own
necks.
I ve never said this to anyone.
but I more often than not dance with you in my head. I do, I.. your waist is at my kneels level, yet you’re always taller and more talented than me, and we dance to prokofiev and Jackson, two different songs in our earbuds, but somehow always end up crying because of how graceful we are.
I think the reason I fantasize like this is it might be my way of subconsciously thanking you for stopping me from always running from myself up and down 5th ave.
I am bad. bad, bad, bad.
I need you to spank my soul back
into your youth
fullness. but I implore you, from the bosom of your heels, to teach me how
to stop acting
like a stupid brat and grow the fuck up already
In fourth grade I used to sprint home from school
Every single day panting
Finish my homework
And then wait on the front bench for Raluca
To get home from school
Such a high
Seven second lasting as she passed florally
(Not even a wave)
Whole Dalis worming, consummated to ashes in my
Minuscule pit, heart drum & bass
For entire prolonged minutes after she passed, my infantile
Beatrice, leaving me clueless
Until the next day same place same time
Raluca is married today, things didn't really work out that well between
Me and her,
But that s ok, because since then,
I d never felt anything like
you. I want to have your asian babies.your Asian babies want to have
Me.
Admitting to falling in love with someone
In a love poem like this and putting it so
Coarsely, nonmetaphorically, poems don't talk like this
Que tanto haces, Wei? Ismail the brunchly guatemalan chef at Piccoli Trattoria asks with various curiosity when he sees me writing about you, whom I hate so profoundly for
teaching me how to forgive, you nightmarish spread,
you poisoned floss, you swallowed howl, you unfarted fart, you MSG OD, you hive breaking into hives,
why
did you have to do that? why why why why why why why why?
is it because your face is crooked?
is it because I don't dance?
Is it because waking up next to you is the only time I ever slept?
Is it because you are watching your figure?
Is it because of the god that makes yogurt freeze for you?
Is it for the sake of all the nights, afternoons, oh and mornings we went crosseyed from playing the beast with two backs?
I thank you either way.
I'm going to take the sins of your father
down to the pond,
and send them off like viking flames,
like snails on blades,
like fireworks inside a soccer ball,
like that one time you made Romanian cocoa bread.
All our faces are crooked,
from straining to see right,
from flinching because of the
squirrel that runs past us
2016 mi/h
and is scared of us shitlesser
than we are of it.
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