MGBarrera

In The Apartment Building Next Door: Two People Stark naked at the bottom of a winding stairwell, Michel tells Lola about reef renewal and dreaming to forget and asteroids and prose and bees absorbing heat from flowers. Michel is the talkative nervous type. Lola just barely revealing herself through the crack of a door, interrupts as he inhales deeply, tells him of his resemblance to the underbelly of a whale, or the hull of a ship- something well made, sturdy, with fragile bones and beams. In turn, with breath, he tells her of her resemblance to a maple leaf turning in the rain.  Shifting his weight he says:      

Suspended I like the palms of your hands- dry and static.  I like the palms your mother planted in the front yard when you were five.  They grew more quickly, but you grew healthier- less green. Good thing we planned this exodus into the Dead Sea.   Lucky we cannot help but to float. Something from the sea, the land- they were mockingbirds, weren’t they? This cannot be healthy.   How the hell did my mother manage to sink here like a fish after death?  She claims to have exhaled hard, but my lungs will not compress enough; I cannot let go enough.  Let me tell you something- We should grow gills, individually,

Vivienne For you, conditions were perfect enough to make you clean, to help make others clean, if you wanted. I guess you could thank your yellow fever- jaundicing you into oblivion- a glass case and I stare from the outside wondering, if you ever thought, as you washed yourself, about the curves of your own body- mouth shut and humming, waiting for your husband to join you.

Eros There is something about daylight, my fingers pressing into you like wax, and the grass growing the length of your fingertips, as I remind you that you are a botanist, have made me my profession too, so I pick the leaves growing with your hair, grooming. I remember you telling me once about lemon trees -like citrus groves- the only plant to bloom, bud, produce fruit simultaneously; we have too, our skin stained with bark, our fingers searching.

Upon Leaving He Molted: A Bantam- flightless, unsure.  Nostrils upturned, he set out in the rain, brass buttons turning.  He searched for shelter- eaten tin, or wood: rotten, unfit for termites- their wings fallen off: wooden floors, the bed sheets of children: baroque as a praying mantis, as pearls, a mother’s skin.  Water gets in, right hand green, the brass still turning while the left searches maybe, for another.

Deciduous The parrots kept their feathers up for the second strongest muscle and licked for comfort to know what it’s like to be affectionate, to know affection. We watched, took in dander like memorization, practiced on ourselves before each other wanting leaflessness, those branches.

On those days My feet melt to the side walks on the days I go into the city, my mouth tasting like river water when I plaster my letters to you on telephone poles and poles that host electricity. These are the ones I didn’t want you to see you for their honesty dripping like honey onto your finger tips and the way in which here, I attempt to use symbols to be affectionate.  You do not take them, you are not here to take them but there are strangers who do and keep them in boxes under their beds, folded as if they once were in envelopes, and in years will scrapbook them telling the neighbor’s kids about

Videos I have daydreamt your joints, your ligaments for your movement like pictures- the old family ones yellowed in the attic.  You say:               Tonight, let’s watch those. So I bring mine over and we drink first knowing better.  We turn them on and I say:               Who the fuck knew               we would end up like this. You are too drunk to focus though but laugh because you are there- little, bossy and falling.  You try to remember your childhood out loud in a syntax alien even to me, brainstorming:                There were children, then stopping because your thoughts are melting quick