what else grows in brooklyn.

Dear Rebel,

This air is confusing. Outside, trees convulse like belly dancers without a belly. Tiny bits of life form on their branches and peek out from well-packed soil, flirting with this chilled air. They are calling this spring, but you are trapped beneath layers of snow and my hands have taken on a skin tone of chapped strawberry blond.

There are deadlines and dates and bleached scraps of language, tie-dyed into genderless terms of endearment. I think I may have found my noun.

I have put on weight, Rebel. It is shaped like Brooklyn, kind of bloated and curved, without angles and crowded. Winter fed me three affairs and two nondescript encounters and spring has already been titled: ellipses…………..

Don’t you want to know how this will end. Or what if this time, there is no period, but simply a line of dots dangling against burnt fingertips and I know what you are thinking: nothing lasts forever. But what would happen if something did.

 

 

 

how about instead of beginning, we continue from what always existed inside us. we were both just waiting to meet.

To no one in particular, the poet says:

If only I could lose all my words, soak them in bleach of forgotten cries so that when I speak them again to you, they will still have their roots dripping as I press them against your chest. Our mouths will stink of soil and earthworms. We will know nothing of scars or bruising or words like provocation. Everything will be dressed in unworn rhythm. How much does all this cost? How much to traumatize a memory so distinctly that it no longer howls. 

rooting.

They were there all along. These roots. These birds panelling the sidewalks like decorative creatures flying in and out of the NYC trash heaps. These feelings of something new brewing.

Winter is long gone, even though it refuses to exit stage left, so it remains like a stalker, fondling the wind that fondles you. Even so, it is Spring now. Windows unlatch and humans disrobe.

Head to the tree where you wept last spring, letting twelve pounds of salt exit from your body that you fed to the ducks that they leaked into the lake.

Carve your name into the sunlight.

Kiss the one who arrived on a Sunday and smells like every book you ever fell in love with because each chapter revealed itself in increments and the glossary practically impregnated your mind.

Eat something from the ground. Do not wash it. Risk a tickled throat from some New York soil.

Dig nude toes into the bark of that tree. Tell it your dirtiest secrets; it will hide its giggles in each knot of wood. Sing out loud even if others surround you. Do not apologize for being off key or mispronouncing instrumentation.

Take something away from here to last you until summer. Let it come apart in your pocket. Give it permission to become something else….

…as you are.

forest on my throat

“forest on my throat”   -Dan Dissinger

Do not speak about this. Do not explain this as a tickle or gargle of maps reminiscent of five years ago. This has been diagnosed and shelved. This has been neatly folded and attic’d. Throat cannot be a place where campers go. Throat cannot be a jungle of peeled species. Just call it passageway or tunnel toward trachea. Call it a situation for swallowing but do not do not DO NOT call it greenwood or bushland. This will make others want to navigate your coordinates. This will call too much attention to what drips in there. You call it swimming pool of muscle. Call it tongue, please. Do not glamorize the strength of your mammalia.

Put away your colors. The roots of your state lines. No one needs to know about the lineage of your wrists. Your belly is just a belly; it is not not not blue-lined construction paper with scratch outs and hauntings. Your face is just malnourished of symmetry. There is no need to beg for awards just because your lips exist and your moles follow a pattern parallel to constellations. There is no magic in you. Use your toes for counting. Put away your scar tissue, covered in shadow’d faschia from that time that time.What are you looking for have you found it? No, you may not use your knees as a tax write-off, nor your gag or eardrums. You may fold, but do not call yourself paper or weekly or subscribed or footnoted. You are not a thesis, nor an essay worthy of citing. This is not a metaphor. You are just body. You are just em(bodied]. You are just that.

create a tunnel with body & excavate & root

Fur from underground tells us to remove our wool, our zippered necks, our hibernation. Ignore the ice seizured from the sky. Pretend not to see the purple clouds, twitching out poor circulation.

This is Spring.

Notice the root vegetables. The twirl of wheels against iron between bodies called bike ride. Notice the drip of petals falling then flying across city blocks. Notice exposure of ankles and slippery shoulders.

The roots are just toes pressing in to the autumn and cold that hide not so far beneath. Keep your fleece away. The night still shivers but pretend it into a whisper. There is green out there and it peeks out from the grey. Tulips like turmeric can aid away the wounds of winter. Call out the goose bumps on forearm as inspired breaths. The moon awaits your nude.