In my dream my arm is a list of tattoos faces of the Arcana, all ten.
2
I told you a lie and it wasn't even a good one the kind you spend nights up worrying about, the kind that makes you a suspect of everything— No – this was the kind of lie I didn't even notice I told.
3
The clock says 3:33 of a weekday night in late June. I make a wish and something awful blows our main line loose from its anchor on the house and the power goes out.
Sweet Dreams by Leslie Marcus
The strangest part when the doctor uses all that metal to get in is that it doesn't frighten me. I'm just tired of having to be the one to see it.
5
She starts talking already. It is the kind of meow like a boy's index finger poking steadily, softly in your upper arm you can ignore for only so long, like water torture.
6
I start to fall just when the sun knifes the horizon and the alarm screams for attention— then again when furlough-five approaches, and dusk rolls you toward me in the bed.
7
Slugs die of caffeine. Funny it doesn't just speed them up like me. Now if they had a shell or were fast they'd be delicious and difficult.
8
Even the body which revolves around motion begs please do not go today— stay in bed, or sit in that chair, the black one in the corner by the window where the sun comes in.
9
I hear voices and they are not the ones sitting in a semicircle in this meeting room they are the ones wondering how I'll get my coffee and if you've written me an email. Sometimes they start talking about flowers and air, and how fast it moves.
10
I don't smoke but I'll go out anyway.
11
Fourth gear has arrived and my stomach growls but it isn't hunger for food, this revving of engines ready to blast out the door, down the stairs and skid mark the ground with my feet, like flagging the moon.
12
No matter how many times I take this walk and they ask my name and they ask for change and I give it up and back they still won't remember who I am.
13
I'm not sure the ladder at the escape window can hold your weight it's made of soda straws and the window only opens halfway so throw something soft down like a pillow or blanket so we know where to put the Hook.
14
I don't want to talk to you with my mouth like morning feet —how often I end up on the wrong train, down the wrong street, and late— I miss you and it's only been half a day since I saw you so I don’t want to talk to you, I just want to roll you around my mouth like brand new wine.
15
Focus isn't a marathon, it's a sprint. I play a lot of solitaire.
16
This line I'm writing needs toner… This line I'm writing is ringing… This line I'm writing is out of paper…
17
How many times will I ride down the long tunnel home, looking out into the complete dark except for the thin light knifing down each rail from the station where we've not yet arrived?
18
Meet me at Starbucks I know it's bad but they have good chairs and we can sit and I can do some work and maybe you can write a poem and then we'll eat and I'll feel better because I'll have gotten stuff done… and I say okay because I know we'll get cookies then in your car.
19
I always remember Why I am Not a Painter when that sky comes like a dragon on a blue boat.
20
Let's walk until our shoes fill with sand and our eyes adjust to the ebb until you break and the breaking breaks me waves edging to a press in the sand the shape of two bodies.
21
A river of sky careens above our heads where all afterthoughts and intentions, comebacks, and pretty, useless words struggle for air. Raise your hands.
22
Only you get to call me my little love poet— what you must think we do in the out-of-sight hours writing 'til our hands leak tadpoles, 'til our froglet sheets tear from their grasp on our lovers' backs, I think, staring out into all that black.
You Too II by Leslie Marcus
I can only dream of midnight's slashes and slow mice, for I've got someplace else I have to be, some place the water of my heart and bones wants to see.
24
She curls into me like a twin, like my grandmother's thirty-two perfect silver cowlicks settled in their bobby-pinned spots each night.