i sneak in the back to avoid the front porch talk.

April 9: -stick

sweet cakes
in gummy fondant
hats curl up on
my lips like flowed
solder with no where to_______________r

when i kiss you it
s p r e a d s_____________________u
like caramel: the
sticky strands of
sugar maybe turn____________________n
right out of the
bag. you tilt it
and in the room's
heat, it browns.




( I WROTE THIS ON A CHAPSTICK. I will post a picture later? )

As Nice as Pie is quite daring. I enjoy it mucho. Also, the focus on feet is very...cinematic. It has the flavor of a touching short film.

April 10: insecure

there are no directions in this space
and i hang my by feet on the floor to the wall
with my arms out and down and spinning in my sockets
like whirring fans made out of sinews and bones i feel
like i am made of blades and cut through the air
and spin spin spin until right is left and i feel
my eye, my left eye, the one that twitches sometimes,
i feel it under my right ear, dripping down into my middle cheek
like the leftover smoothie that's slow to pour out of the blender.
oh god oh god which way is up is that the belly of a star
or the top of its head and why are these buckles so lazy
to raise their hands and steel mouths to remind me
that i should have stayed in their grasp? they are cobras
to a flute's plaintive ballad in sticky indiaheat
and in mid air they feel inadequate
even though the pilot tells me to get the fuck back down.
down? down? up? down?

April 10: shellfish

clam-open belly button
with a coal-caked tongue
peeks out
at me and smiles through its twisted
puppy dog hanging jowl
wrinkles
while all around
all the lines point
up to plum colored nipples
and a further trek
to your peacock tail eyelashes
that were
not long ago
brushing away what the beer
had left.

April 10: Cashflow

we do things we say we'll never do.
we buy dinner together after we say we need to save
and to eat in. we make rice in the rice cooker, add salsa,
shredded cheese, sour cream to sate the
gnawing guilt for now. i eat with chopsticks. you eat with a fork,
and we sit huddled around our bowls on the couch
watching shows from the computer to the television
so we can really enjoy our night in, cheap. cheap
but we do things we say we'll never do when we let ourselves out:
"just going to the movies. no food since we went
to that thai place on tuesday and shared
two straws in a coconut bubble tea to avoid...

you know." except we smell pizza in the air as
we walk out from the dim room, smiles and minds whirring
and people walk by with shopping bags and take out and smiles
somehow brighter than ours (they can afford brand toothpaste)
and we can't help but shyly conspire to buy
pizza from the shop by our house
to keep the buzz going while we can.

April 10: Nostalgia

There is a picture of me
that I keep hidden in the back of my desk drawer
so that I have to dig to take it out.
I am six years old, on a merry go round,
and the world around me is a blur of primary colors
that nibble at the edges of my wide, white-brimmed hat
while even though my body is in focus,
it seems to blur around my small, new tooth smile.
Whenever I uncover it, I hold a lighter to the corner
with my thumb poised on the switch
and wonder what it would feel like to push down.

April 11: Mariachi

A pressure cooker on my counter whistles metallic songs that remind me of cardinals
and I think I see one streak by in the silver reflection, a scrape of red on android knees.
In the back of the quiet kitchen, a tock tock dance is tapped out by tiny, wizened hands
on the face of a glassy eyed puffed out clock, tock tock. In air-high shoes and pinprick heels
the hands go spinning off, play mock cultural ambassadors to dusty blenders,
bent knives and forks pressed too hard into plates now chipped and huddling, shamed
in far corners of cotton lined cabinets of cherry print, cherry leaves, green white red in
the colors of Mexico.

I liked almost all, if not in their entirety, then in parts, but Mariachi and and plastic kitchen sets with cheese I loved in particular. They both have that air of form and tone complementing each other beautifully -- the looseness of your dialogue is mimicked so delicately with the looseness of the poetry, aesthetically, on the page (/screen), and so your voice suddenly seems strongest in these poems to me; clearest. That dash of personality is what makes any writing so damn attractive -- and you know that, of course, from prose.

Also --

you remind me of dead birds and apartment advertisements
and foam clown noses left outside at the edge of the backyard patio
where the grass hasn't grown for as long as we've lived here: it's always been mud
and between the mud

Opening line here, and general breathlessness but weirdly striking clarity were brilliant.

April 11: peach-ch-ch-ch

Spoiler

(oh, don't kill me, Kylan)

I want to suck a peach.
I want
to SSSUCK
a peach
CH-CH-CH.
I want to SUCK
your peach dry
until the hairs are pressed so far into my cheeks
that they leap from their place in the breakable fire-tainted skin
and burrow in between my pores to get stuck in the grease.
That's what they wanted, after all.
Your juice is too clean,
at least when you keep it holed up in the peach
CH-CH-CH
and circling around the ssstone
like an airy snake.
I want to suck it out
and spit it out
and watch it harden in the air
from juice to a sticky orange
mess I can scrape off the table with my fingernails,
lift my fingers to my lips
and dig my tongue in under the nails
to bring it back
somehow sweeter
after being ravaged by air and separated from what it knew.
I want to suck
that juice
from your peach
from between my finger nails
and if I can't get it that way,
go on,
I'll bite.

Alright Hannah. An honest real opinion. I've skimmed the poems, read some deeply, and then remember more of you from the forum as a larger body of work.

So where to begin Hannah? I hate most writers. Unequivocally. I despise them bitterly. They are closed away, locked up, and cannot hope to find themselves, much less their readers. Though is that the point? Ha! Readers are recipients of nothing we intend and take what they will. Writing to them is a tireless pointless effort, And isn't that frightening? Reader determine everything, it's just a roll of dice. So what is theory then? Nothing but an attempt to create jobs to categorize literature and shape culture and affect what gets published to certain culture and make us good little consumers?! Oh, but I sound like Jack Zipes now.

Hannah, I want pull out your voice and expose it without skin. Wouldn't that be fun? That is deconstruction. To the review however. Let us see.

The El, Hannah, screeches hello in hell in Chicago, about life, Hannah.
The poems, Hannah, tell a story of an experience of a time, Hannah; do they speak to you?
Do you taste the bitter feeling of disappointment in yourself, Hannah? Do you see the frustration at writing in your poems as you tell from the lines and lines spanning every page, day after day, between work and class, food at the deli and skirting the street to narrowly miss taxis; or do you live comfortably and sit on the couch staring at blank pages?
Would you cry if your cat died Hannah?
Chicago is a lovely city Hannah, but what if the mafia came to your home and broke in your windows and the lives of everyone you cared for were threatened because you "looked like someone who knew somebody that did something you might have seen"?
Have you ever heard Jazz on the streets of Chicago Hannah, those poor black men singing and living each beat, thems a ringin out in da Millenium pak an dems boys sing it good, listen to their souls Hannah; that's love of death, Hannah.
You ask why you write Hannah, stop asking, you'll never know. Wake up Hannah, it's a new day, new things to think.
Hannah, will you run if I touch something deep, something visceral, something only few should know? Or are you frightened your life has no meaning? Silly Hannah, Silly. Is your name Hannah? Does it matter?
Hannah, don't be the Marquis de Sade, don't be Kant, don't be Jack the Ripper, nor Salinger nor Eliot; Hannah walk with the wilds and think of your childhood; Hannah write about what you suppress and the fear of losing everything, everyone, always.
Hannah, here is flowery beautiful language "there was a garden once where happiness was reflected in the eternal sun's patience and it cast light on love as the rivers trickled between trees and leaves of grass, whispering of a man named Whitman to come and sing of the world as it was, and there were no humans in the garden, only snakes and serpents slithering in the grass forever and then one got bored and told a story and everything later came to be".
Hannah, I sympathize with Satan and pity God; that's what the El tells me about life, Hannah.

I think I made that clear enough. Hope it helps!
Anytime in the future! ;D

April 11: oh, that's right. you all like religious offerings as long as you can post them on facebook.

i know there's a bean in the middle of some sidewalk by some twisted pieces of metal
and i know it's cool to take pictures when you look into the shine at the reflection of the camera
but not the camera itself. we don't want to leave our reflections behind.
they call it a bean, like a lima bean like baked beans with bacon like navy beans,
but somewhere in a little rectangle it says it is a cloud gate and why would it be called a cloud gate
when all we can see from down here on the sidewalk is human faces out
in their best opera theater clubbin clothes and posing happy for their moment by a mirror?
there is only one way to see this bean as a cloud gate, and that's to be god.

April 12: walking

if i pick between the cattails
i know that one will rear back
and smack my face, dull and brown
and soft.

April 13: the honey is crystal in the bottom

tea is all of us when I cup the corner of the mug with my palm
but my hand is not a corner and the heat has to jump across to touch me.
I feel greedy though I didn't ask it to caress me, but how did I earn it?
how did I earn the comfort and sophistication of drinking tea in a mug
when all I did was let the tap drain into the kettle and let the fire light
gas that I let out and maybe all I really did was choose to bring it one more thing
by holding the liquid sugar over the mouth and squeezing out the gel and
using a spoon to tornado it in between the tea.

but earl always had honey to dance with so it would glow more like the sun
in the stained mugs too porous to clean out completely. honey was there, before
and how did I earn this heat?

April 13: the fifteen year old girl sits at a cafe

she is dark in all the ways that i am pasty and insubstantial
her shoulders are firm and solid, tied in by the collarbones i can see
from across the patio. she is the kind of girl that can wear a dress
and cinch it as far as it will go, so that when she wears
oversized sweatshirts, they are glamorous and can't hide
her figure as it trickles, slim and slippery, out the bottom.

April 13: there are noises in the hallway

When I am alone,
I open the window
just to hear the crashing sounds
of planes more clearly
and to hope to hear the birds
once the lawnmower has stopped tearing up
the tiny strips of grass the city only left for dogs.