From the Archives : The Shithead (Aug. 2018)

Wondering when you last noticed your shadow  

is pure cringe. Swatting at the yellowjackets 

trying to land on the rim of my beer glass 

as if these were poems I’d rather not breathe 

life into. My father years dead — his body turned 

ATM jackpot. Fast fashion, train tickets, beer. 

Welcome to the future. For years I’d wished to be 

in this city alone — without family, friends or 

loved one — now that I’m here. On the dark screen 

of my locked iPhone are intricate smudges 

where my fingers have typed all but the letters 

P and Q — but that’s not true anymore, is it? 

P that’s like kissing one’s own lips, and Q evincing 

how cringy it is to have anything to say at all. 

Like a wish you made but never seriously wanted 

to come true — a grown-up without profession 

crossing to walk on the dark side of the street 

in a country where all anyone understands 

of what I say is my unchained privilege to choose 

to stand at this bar attempting to order a drink 

not in my mother’s tongue has landed me. 

Sun falling behind Montmartre, light curdling 

on Fauburg-Saint-Denis — the fizz of the errant 

photons on the CMOS sensor in video mode. 

And my shadow somewhere under the next table 

at the feet of the couple sitting there, holed up 

in the chair legs. Maybe it’s already gone — maybe 

I’m it. You’re from the States, right? asks the guy. 

I can feel all three of us disbelieving as I recite 

an abridged biography. Basically on par with what 

a pathological liar might embroider, given enough 

time and resources — enough to have induced 

the fiction he remembers as his life to have 

actually occurred, though not entirely convincing 

as I am cast. Look — there’s a bench where 

I kissed my love’s fingers. Another, where later 

she wept for the cysts flowering in her uterus 

and pushed me away, so far from home. 

Same sky of fresh gauze, post-op hematoma. 

Same desire lines in the Place des Invalides lawn 

and heat that lives under your shirt and pants 

tearing at the soft skin between your legs. 

Meme silence dans les squares sur les bancs. 

I could not love her like she needed me to 

as we were waiting for the bus, eight years ago. 

A balcony where we spent the morning drinking 

conscious of wasting the day, much as we paid 

to be there. Drunk again — just now I walked 

through a park where my parents quarreled 

as I cried and hid off in the bushes for reasons 

I didn’t understand. What year was that even — 

1995? 1996? Weren’t we like those lovers of 1905 

locked in each other’s arms and legs wishing 

for the moment together to be other than what 

we were condemning each other to live? 

Tout le reste o baiser baiser perpétuel — only you  

could fail this poem, having lived through 

the loss of your other. Tell me, if it is possible 

to love again — was the first love ever real? 

How on that morning up there on the balcony 

you never thought to look down — see him  

tracing below where the light of morning  

throws the crowns of roofs on the sidewalk, 

moving just past the edge where it’s hard  

to make out any features beyond that 

it is the shape of a man, yes — facing away  

as he’s bent into his pacing, one hand gripping  

the other at his back and collar raised in greeting 

the current of what he knows there’s no hope 

recognizing will have been — no, not even 

faint laughter coming from the rooftops.