The Poetry Marathon

In Which I Remove My Eyes From the Sky that Looks Like Boiled Water, Above Downtown Grand Rapids Last Year Before a Hardcore Punk Show in the Attic of a Church

A wanted poster is a blood flyer. There’s

one tucked into every street. We walk

in a stranger sway along Jefferson Ave. & the

locals can tell we ain’t local. Bend eyes to bleach pallor

of sidewalk, roasted and cracked like teenage summer seclusion

finally thrust into sun. Words summon our eyes up, and the words

weren’t even meant for our ears but we can taste the stale spit of fear

salivating an unwanted swallow.

The swallow is the giving in or up or out. The swallow

is the casual stride to Vertigo Records where we know

we’re safe and all we hear is happy. The swallow

is the thump of a breakdown beginning or hip-hop

back beat holding its own. The swallow

is us finding that one punk record no one else would have

and no one else wanted. The swallow

is us designating purchase and departure.

Funny how we swallow more when we pass the churches

or the 24-hour diners. The swallow

is a sigh we can’t allow ourselves

until we out of downtown.

first impressions

you sweet bitter.

you rough cotton.

you coffin still.

you paper wave.

you staircase high

on bannister descent into

you summer slips.

you sip sparkle at dinner.

you glass ring laminate.

you eye silence.

you glance red.

you quiet scrape

of chair on wood.

you leave leftovers.

Teachers Who Require Family History Assignments Should go Fuck Themselves

after Ollie Schminkey

Still no one told me how my grandpa died. He and all his boys had names with the letter “T.” Like they’re all semblance of variation to him and I’m wondering how I can get even smaller. How tiny can I make my eyes without shutting them? My mother doesn’t even acknowledge my father’s family until they seem to intrude with kindness. She ask me whyI’d want to vacation up north where they live. There’s nothing there. Sure, trees. Their economy so bad. No jobs. She tell me without telling me I’m wrong. Next answer.

Everything is bipolar when you scrounge deep enough. My mother sells my father’s and my sister’s artwork under her own name. My father used to throw his own shit at cars with his brothers. Beatings were a routine like brushing teeth before bed. He never touched me. Maybe that’s fear. He tells me stories of Cold War Germany and how the Czechs would moon them across the border on their walls. He tells me how he smashed a man’s face in with the bronze sheen of a beer bottle because he was harassing every woman and military man in the bar.

He tells me never to salt a man’s coffee. He lives on it the way I shoulder social anxiety and depression with cheap college backpack and a one eyed glance at doorways. I don’t speak to my aunt who has onset dementia and a failing nervous system anymore. She used to give me CDs and books and movies. My uncle hasn’t changed a day.

My mom speaks groundhog day 20 questions to me. My sternum knots itself with her inborn smoking habits 25 years in the making. She still thinks it’s a secret. We hold onto addictions like the want of eye contact and smiles when in love. I hold onto my already dead sister after her stroke and brush her hair like we’re ten and seven again. Grandma’s dead at 88 and the house sold too cheap and no one has Thanksgiving together anymore. We are not together. I fail at suicide ten days later. Everyone still asks me the same questions or not at all. Nothing has changed. Funny how temporary death really is.

Internal heart, meet wind. Be gone. Love like wave always returning to smother kiss on beach.

Nothing ever changes.

To the Ticket Girl Working at the Carnival, Cherry Festival 2016

Gulls scatter erratic,

like plastic bags estranged

in air current

over the ferris wheel.

A wind peaceful

of lake, wind in

my veins, or rather

winded, bone-terse

& skin-brittle

from cold cloaked

in summer’s peeling.

the dog days razing

a burnt lintel of wither

& aimless want

on my back.

I follow the lead

of wandering color,

sporadic in disposition,

neon memories buckled to

bleak nights where I hold

quiet & clamor each in a palm.

My eyes elevated to

a bruised sprawl of sky

until my muse drifts

to you, red security shirt

& a scraggly-toothed smile.

I buy a ticket & hold onto

the search for you

at every rotation

of the tilt-a-whirl.