[in the night, we are free]
“Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.”
-Elizabeth Bishop, “The Man-Moth”
you too must say I was the loneliest person who ever lived
say you dream of oceans & lighthouses & creatures foreign
to our flightless bodies in need of deep ruptures of oxygen
in our soft lungs digging our fingers into the space between
say you long for the solitude & heartache of the subways
people you wish to love but will never know like you know
yourself i too am cursed with the largest eyes & sandy
tears that look like my favorite anxieties or fear what
i am capable of feeling towards like learning how to dance
underwater like being a child who tries to capture air bubbles
in pulpy palms for hours to cheat my own biology or to become
more than what i am say it again say it like a breath say i too am the
loneliest person who ever did live
[the bisexual poem]
how i never used a hanger as a line & hook
how it’s more the way my yard looks when
the world tilts in the celestial ether
how it’s a deep visceral feeling
how one place becomes another like
a dream sequence
you never recover from or
how the light runs down my body
as a seam does
how i lack a head & heart line
how mine aren’t golden like the trick
of an opening door
how i’m an in between with my legs protruding from underneath the bed
how i was trying to find viability beyond my own body my own holes my own bug eyed clinging to the walls my own need to be loved in a recreation of —
[lost in the blue]
here i am, a pronouncement
of space filled with my belly, my
thighs —
my hands scooping out the liquid
purple like bruises like —
am i a person, a rhetorical question
because of course i am
of course i am
you might say
how philosophical musings are for bullshitters
but like, maybe i am made of poems
like this one tall & precarious
teacups or spoons or metaphors
stacked together a little village of
thank you cards
so human i’ve dissolved
but, like, hear me out,
have you ever fallen straight into the sky
it’s like falling into a well
you almost just —
trip
over anything really, your own words,
cracks that broke —
you get it.
but like, I’m talking about the whole sky
i’m talking about cartwheeling recklessly
careening, really, into where god lives
he would be really surprised,
his mouth all wide like
what the fuck are you doing here
when you fall upside down
do these anxieties all of the —
do these people hate me
do i deserve to be hated
do i want to be hated so i can be right
or not deal with my own self hatred or
am i just terrified of being mediocre so
living in extremes is easier is so much better
is so —
do they fall out of your pockets
like all the quarters you were saving for
laundry day your favorite day where
everything is finally clean
like, would i get lost in the great big blue
all the clouds are always shifting
like i shouldn’t trust a thing they say
like they gossip when you aren’t looking
or give you wrong directions just to watch you
falter because that is so funny
that is so —
____________
Paige Glasser graduated with a B.A. from Centre College. She was born in Nashville, Tennessee, but currently lives in Utah. Her work intends to create rooms for the reader to enter and touch the walls.
Comments