by Jerryan Nicole
I Am Trying to Plan Ahead
Another day opening myself and invariably thinking of
your handsome soft face coming into being. I have prepared
a false routine for you, memorized it like my own passage.
You may not even know how easy you have it in my head.
I will you a beautiful waitress and a greenlit way home.
When it is my turn, I do not know what to do. I pick up
a life to lead just to say I did something in the meantime.
All the while of course I have been waiting for you. Still
the walls are blank, my skin bare, my hands unadorned,
not even a multi-hyphenate in my dreams. I get frightened
thinking you can hear me pray, my voice tip-toeing quicker than
I can catch it, ambling right out of me, swimming across the river,
turning its watch backwards twice, cresting on moonlit corn grass,
slamming right into your ear drum.
Then I feel us gasp in the middle of the night. We
awaken at the same time, reach lamely for nothing.
Urgent Dispatch
That gossamer wife of yours cannot stop peeking
through my thorny bushes. Please tell her
I am tired of cleaning up her blood. We know
what she is looking for, it has become embarrassing
for all of us. The next time I see her I will turn on my hose
until she dissolves. No one will even know she was
there, her blonde hair will fly into a sunspot, I will take
that sheet she calls a dress for my own. And don’t bother looking
for her; I will be in bed by the time you come home.
Incident Report
trapped in the steel headrush
studious amusement within a thin crushing veil,
the anticipation of bitter dinner weeds – but in harmony,
in hope of being distorted. futility is no matter.
or at least that is what he told me, deep scratches of truth along my back.
one can wait to be changed, i know. or one can change through a taken hand,
through a fine carved future. when the map is unknown,
when the plight and the fear of god cry for home,
when we have come to the same solar spot, then
i understand you as the smallest intractable desire.
you will never leave me, will you? i carve you out, but here you remain.
****
Jerryan Nicole is a Brooklyn-based writer and art historian.