Cameron Gorman is Intern, Wick Poetry Center, Senior Editor, The Burr, Editor-in-chief, Luna Negra, Former Editorial Intern, POZ
conveyor
i’ve been waiting a while
to write this one down,
so i can’t remember
all the things
piled on the side of the check-out line,
strawberry chapstick and candy, gum,
tiny tin bottles of WD-40,
wipes and tissues, maybe cards, and
i am tired-sad, and
my eyes sag under the weight of
the couple beside me,
waiting to buy a maple twist.
ah! I remembered that,
The maple twist, and he said,
i haven’t had one of these in years,
just years,
and i was stuck ahead,
staring at the reese’s and twix bars and
skittles, you don’t say much, and i know it’s
because you know i will cry, or yell,
scream at you and make them grasp away
from the check-out line,
plastic bags to thank
and helium
to hold until you fall.
and now, ah, i remember,
and here we are, yes, i remember,
how the fluorescents bore down, and i
felt your hand in my hand, and i
swallowed poison in my throat, and i
saw the conveyor belt and i
wondered if whoever made it
was happy.
french toast casserole
she hates ruining paper,
hates ruining paper
snow white, once white,
now full of her footprints,
scratchings, the first brush of chapstick,
imprinted with her lips,
and somehow, she wants
her new skin back, her,
standing in the thrumming
hospital blues,
waiting to touch
the only thing she ever had as pure,
not yet olive from the sun,
raw and unbitten,
uncut, unmuddied,
a dream of a dream of a
childhood dream,
it was never that creamy and freckled,
not loved and brushed,
and when her hand
reaches for that skin,
she knows should she touch it,
no, she can’t touch it.
the crying and thrashing,
and she does,
and now
nothing, nothing,
nothing is
there.
to the guidance counselor’s office, 2011
because I don’t think that I should leave her in there,
should I?
shaking like that,
crying and wailing for something to stop.
stop what? what can we do?
“i haven’t slept in days,” she tells me,
“i’m so tired.”
i want to help her, and you know that,
but what can you do except
show her framed photos of the counselor’s sons,
football giants,
a ticking, sterile clock,
and a door covered in the faces of kids from Sandy Hook,
there so he can point them out, and say,
“that’s who you should cry for.”
i don’t want to leave her there,
i watch myself walk by,
and i shouldn’t care, i can’t,
but she’s faded into the timeline of life,
burned into the screen of sleeplessness
like a light bulb’s ghost,
weeping stuck inside itself
on a kirlian day.
fleeting
she’d not dare
bite the peach
sink her teeth into the
flesh of the
moment
if she knew that
the rapture
the sweetness
the euphonic speaking
was
the fuel of the longing
was a blaze only
kindled
by each passing
minute
the sureness of loss
growing more
and more
certain
more painful and
bleeding
sanguineous and
beating
by the halcyon
kingfisher blue
of
the present
the
sweet, sticky
love
of the
now
