Look It's Fine
/You are on a beach and you are swimming
Alone to frolic with the fishes
Adamantly irritating child
You have dropped your warm demeanour
Friday over truffle pizza
Doffed off your autonomy without a sound
A contender for the simper
Of one slavish solipsistic system
There is a vacuum cleaner in the middle of the floor
When your mother said to do the dishes
And there I stood, appropriated in my lilac dress
The housewife I was always meant to be—
Lounging in the living room
Abandoned in a leather couch
The prelude stops and then attenuates
Throughout the drive back from the airport
Palm trees weeping, discourse is a well away
A little golden bell just like an earring falling
You left me to drive away
And so we navigated highways
Made our way towards a faithful
Birthday present you had promised me
Sentimental kisses swaddled in a scene
Promenade throughout the imitation riviera
And then you led me to believe—
You promised you would visit me.
Oceanic stereo is seething
Sunny Isles wrapped about beach
Mellowed casual careening
Not unlike that vulgar evening—
We are in New York
Washington Square
Madison and Union Square
There are all the roses
Smoking drunken soggy joints
Yellow smog like in the poem
When you always used to listen—
Before you learned to have me bleeding
Caught up in your binding string
With men it’s always talk of freedom
Four more years and college days
But just to be a woman—sniffing all the tulips
When I stand up it’s always twisted
Crazy fucking clingy girl
She once dared to have a bloated heart
Diced in red tomatoed pieces
Like those artificial sweeteners
You had had a chance to meet them
Love is crippled in a seizure
Melted phantom swollen pieces
I’ve never had this poignant experience
The man I felt up in the middle of the park
Fondled through my blue-green dress
Coddled on a public bench
On an overt motorbike the bearded man is singing
“You are in love—but get a room!”
We kissed through whiplash in your old apartment
Flashback to my airport wishes
Grand forgotten memories
You would never wish away
Swimming in the lucid water
Pillowed breasts—your kneecap—chest
You have not yet turned eighteen
Revisiting lost dignity
Breathing wheezing nicotine
I am over twenty-three
You are acting quite obscene
Break my heart in the casino.
Well you can dream of being filthy rich—
Or a meagre suicidal failure
Sometimes I would wager—
All the jokes you used to say
Jumping from the balcony
If this selfsame reality did not bend your way—
Sometimes I would wager you were speaking truths
When you stood beneath the fountain deep in the casino
Burning up your kindness as you gambled it away
But gradually…
For I never did perceive the difference
Between a genuine apology
And these manufactured platitudes
Soaking bathtub whiskey suds
Showerhead against my chest
Microphoning muffled notes
When we wished away commitment
Buying clothes without your mother
Generously gruesome and grotesque.
You have never mentioned how I begged you for the sex
Perhaps that makes me a seductress,
Uncouth Russian empress
Wishing you to have the best.
“Listen here I fucking love you,
Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing.”
Evanescent New York fragments
Brought you back to your Miami
Oh, but I was just in a good mood that day
Really, when I asked you later, lying in your bed
But did you really mean it?
But did you really mean it.
But did you really mean it!
We are sitting over mushroom pizza
And your leather wallet paints a silent scene
Oh, I am aware, that there are always other people
But did you need to break my heart at the casino
Liqueured ice cream and a piece of olive oil bread
So does your temper fluctuate entirely
With all the earnings that you stash beneath your belt
Well I once thought that I could teach you—
As one wise man used to say—
Not to be a whore for money
But what other whores exist by definition
The other whore is just another me
But do you remember how you cared for me
New York winters
Soft Miami streets
“This is how it’s meant to be.”
Do you remember when I fought to see you
How the planes were nearly silenced
All our transit wiped away
Largely differential
Nullified, quiescent
Love affair
Miami Beach
Another weekend
“But I didn’t want to do it.”
But do you remember how we stood in the casino
Bat your stupid beautiful eyelashes towards me
Digesting morning news
Like that song you used to listen to
Nirvana, Polly, and the Beatles
Taking in a breakfast fluke
Horror or disquietude
Welcome to the real machine
Your docile marble crippled housewife
I remember cleaning up the laundry
Washing all the dishes
Just so I could stand here screaming
As you leave another evening
Fucking all your sophomoric friends
Thinking one day I shall leave you
Just as you had left behind my reading
And so we went around the marble arches
Just as when I took the trip to show you
What could have been this you and me
Reflection of a hazy dream
Don’t you dare request another thing from me
By Liza Libes
From: United States
Website: https://pensandpoison.com/
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