nothing you expected

You look nothing like I thought you would.
I balk
your ruffled skin and deep-set eyes,
like crevices on mountains, headquarters
of supervillains

You look nothing like I thought you would.
Interspersed with
skin fur of grizzlies,
the realest of the fruits
that humans have to bear

You look nothing like I thought you would.
And aren’t I glad about it,
aren’t I glad?
Aren’t you the same person that
I saw all along?

You look nothing like I thought you would
and I am nothing you expected
but here we are
grasping
for the memory of our ideas
and feeling it tingle beneath our palms.

-A

i am a cabin in the woods

Inside of an old log cabin by wurm9 on Flickr

I am so little of what you assume me to be. I am not this skin, not this mole, not this flattened foot arch. I am a cabin in the woods that you come back to in your mind, and I am never the same. I mask mosquitos with noise from creeks and freaks and shagging. I work the gravel through the hands of the earth, work it so it turns to salt, work it so you die a thousand deaths in your head just trying to get closer to it. I am a friendship forgotten, and remembered. I am a swallow on a sweatshirt. I am the musky smell of teenage boy and his awkward constant inadequacy. I am a tangled rope, sipping water until it swings low and heavy like a belly full of watermelon over the edge of the air, threatening to submerge.

What are you?

What are you, really?

Are you the feeling close to the skin of your toes after you’ve stubbed them? Do you miss them? You are so gentle, like a hangnail praying to be left alone; I am all frustration and impatience, you are a sliver stuck under a nail. Undisturbed, festering. You are the hiss of humidity, the perspiration of your pores as they fall closed into a fretful sleep. You are a fretful of sound, struck like a gavel, with intention, you are wafting like acid into the noses of teenagers, burning away nerves. You are the cough that burns your throat, the puff that grows you into a real nationalist. You are all taxi cabs and garbage trucks and tan lines. You move your feet to an uninterrupted hammering of wood, dance like you hear a chopping block, sway like an elm.

What am I?

What am I, really?

I am a landscape. This is not a game. You have 2 more questions.

-A

thoughts

 

i’ve reserved a space for you at the bend of my neck
it’s kind of bony – your hands oppose my bones,
your hands instil in me a quiet
beyond sound
your hands your voice
there is your hair in my eyes,
looks like my eyes are seeing branch shadows
when my lids shut, it’s like i’m in elle
woods’ wet dream,
pink and patterned

fingers press down on each of my vertebrae
your nails carve a trail from the back of my hairline to
where my back gets convex, re trace it backwards
back up to my hair, return to hair, move hair
stroke pulse
i think i’m getting a headache that’s already dissolved
your fingers are like electric balls
my head has never felt touch
it’s like the greatest organ
and no one cares about orgasms

today yesterday hysterectomies
surgeries – extricating from organs -
gallbladder bladder heart
bleed purple, bleed like a half-breath
when you breathe in leave your thoughts
in your bladder, oxygenate your piss
leave it out in the front yard
to evaporate

faces have organs too all over the world
there are little face organs peeing breathing
feeling someone’s hands on the backs of their necks
feeling the dead trail of someone missing down their backs
scares them like they were touching a gravestone
they were
their feet were on concrete dirt gravel or carpet
their mangled toes, dirt under the nails – dug in to the black sand
tar, like a swamp of boiling suck
up to the ankles
the shins
their fat hips
their too thin thighs
their angular chins

their sighs.

all growing with sea

I am stuck on a cloud going Eastward, sailing across the Prairies,
then, we dip to the Appalachians – all misty and suffocated with
cold breaths.  After that, we are above the Great Apple of NYC,
stuck where souls ought to be, stuck where souls are rushed faster
than the wind that carries me over them,
whispering necessities behind right ears make people run faster,
towards something.

The cloud changes shape; my journey does too.  A sparse few
persevere with me in my sweeping motion Northward – the rest
disintegrate, circle down to the Caribbean – the middle earth,
to where the sun makes the sea glad to be so translucent,
and your skin wears colour like cancer is a magical concept.

Some clouds go across the Atlantic, the salt and seascape of it,
the waves rolling onto the beach like they do every other place on earth,
hit England, get depressed, come back.  Some make it to
the sea of the Past, the olives and the grapes and Minotaurs
all growing on earth, all growing with sea;
some settle for trade routes to Jerusalem or Mecca
or Cairo.

I want to be above this.  Watching the winds muss the clouds,
make something of them – not just hurricanes, but crops,
and orphans happy with their new soil,
and trees that create shadow,
and birds that shed their wings.
I want to see this take shape,

now.
Right above me, under me, beside me-
I want to be stuck on this cloud going Eastward.

-Arina

i hope you’re not lonely, without me

I’m getting my sister her ears pierced for her 9th birthday.

Nothing is working as it should. And it’s the middle of June.

And nothing is working.  I need poetry. I need someone to understand this.

I feel lost without books. I need to read again, even though all I ever do is read.

I love the song “To Build a Home” by The Cinematic Orchestra… and also the movie “Away We Go“.  It’s beautiful and so is Krasinski.

Also, if you live in the Toronto area and want something fun to do in a really public place  - go see a movie outside this summer.

I certainly plan on it.

Also – go GO-CARTING. It’s wicked fun, even especially for middle-aged men.

I’m going to go eat lobster and figure shit out now.

Love the Vedder.

-Arina