ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
FOUR POEMS
by Brett Fletcher Lauer

[Once you have left a boy you stand, without]

Once you have left a boy you stand without
banner, the sky a fire-eater with hair
pushed from face to shoulders.
Most stories bend towards something
like this; boy breaking heart hunching off
in grayish rain; boy held more by ideas than
sensations, with how the puddle in the
courtyard empties than thinking yes,
tremendous how sensitive my nipples are
under these sheets. Once you break and are
remade with silk, all you can hope for
is to drape steel. And you do and you will
once you have left a boy. Though tonight
under lambskin and red light a blue flame
voids the mouth with each kiss.



[Sometimes the prettiness can hurt, sometimes]

Sometimes the prettiness can hurt, sometimes
when breath is not private it touches
too many necks. Sometimes I get mine.
                                          The problem is
being built from a tower of silk,
and say other delicate things, such as
oriental pear blossoms. Like tongues
shifting across the city, I will never be forgiven
no matter how much I alter the land
sex remains a form of modesty but I can't
my eyes hurt afterwards. On the outside
several bee-stings blush across my chest.

An eager world elaborates in my throat.
The sound is tin and smoky. And it burns
like a doorknob in a blazing building.
The escape happens here in talking.
So much talking, about San Francisco
in the summer, about fingerprints, smudges
on the neck. I listen through an empty glass
pressed tight to the wall. You say, the breeze
is drowning me. It rings different when I say it:
your breath is crowning me.
                                          And such things occur,
only to be stowed away. All that matters,
is now, that the jukebox song is sung not
who is singing not how well I dance
in the corner with no one but my own arms,
my own legs. Or that later when I want
to sleep all this off my bones will not work,
my skin will repeat to itself: Who the FUCK
invited you here?
                                          Who invited you here
as soon as I ask someone this, things become
fucked. I keep quiet tonight, possessing zilch
besides a dash of prayer and maybe some
orange peels to absorb the smoke. I don't want
to be whatever you just said I was.



[There is the waiting for a prospect, a lousy]

There is the waiting for a prospect, a lousy
job I sleep through like a nightmare soundtrack
absent of crows, of wind, only hysterical
silence pressing in. Over and over curtains
will not sway even during the heaviest
of breaths the moon is full of minor noises.
It does not matter if it is dark. All exits
suspiciously contain imprints raised for
reading braille. I raise the blinds to let morning
arrive when it has to. Something drives
my tongue to the missing tooth is the only way
of asking why or is it how. Perhaps a sign,
shoes placed pointing towards an exit,
lovemaking only in the dark or didactic
breath on my neck. You should have ended
up locked in my throat like this room.



[And when the phone don't ring, I pretend bodies]

And when the phone don't ring, I pretend bodies
are moral, that the only desired
item left is laughter, as in spilling over, not unlike wine,
not unlike the last gulp.
                                             And so sleeping
one wakes, and waking one begins anew, or so the story
would have you go, until the gray swarming
as in closing your eyes slowly, blurring
recent events now, the imbalance of will
that will break you into a thousand shards
given all the time.
                                 You will become
a witness, without being mocked
or mocking, without referring to a second
more dead language, meaning we read it,
but at dinner only talk around it, perhaps
saying yes, your scarf is aquamarine
with little goldfish and that watch has stopped.
Our slow tongues are still learning
simple tasks like radiance and swallow.
                                                                   And so sleeping
one wakes to those night skies, where
you know, you lose an arm, where everything
hangs onto where you're watching from
where the heart sections off into irregulars.
There can be no replacing the stone
once chiseled. At this hour my hair
gleams with grease.
                                        I am trying to become
witness to the particulars of how
you cast your evening, pretending those kisses
are not lips are not mouth. Too bad
I am not beautiful, that I can't turn
any room into a bedroom, any hand
into a mouth.
                             And when the phone don't ring
I can't see. In the next country I hear bodies
opening, flaying towards surrender. I was not
a witness. The radio was telling me all day: White, White,
White horses are prophetic. And I have nothing
to do with these long days. All the fixtures
being fixed, the floors quieter with their throw rugs.
Wipe the sweat from your flanks: so stormy
and climatic the topic began in a stream and
found itself near your tongue, so glorious
as say a cloud that looks like nothing
but sheer cloudiness.