My Man of Stone

a reflection on seeing Michelangelo's David

I try to stomp out the heartbeat in my feet as we round the corner

the upper crest of his mouth has already hooked my gaze.

            I bite my own lip, coquettishly.

I don’t even have to kiss him to taste the sweat, the fear

straight, I stare, and my feat command me; nearly tripping over my jaw,

I walk with the current down the hallway

without warning, I am flickering between chills and numb

and yet I’ve never felt healthier

his hands, first.

I digest his knuckles:

I know them, I feel them, I am ready to move on.

but his thumbnail, his thumbnail, stops me dead

my heels harden to hoofs as I stand,

belly out,

like a suckling pig on his hind legs

murder me, murder me, too;

I woke up with your name on my lips, David.

Four AM in Florence

Is our humanity so drenched in nervous sweat and gasoline that someone might take a match to her?

I’ve been walking in the night.

I could have sworn it was morning, but here, it’s Buena Note and a black sky.

How should I walk?

Mama taught me to walk strong. Head first, feet second. Had there been cars, I would have walked to face the drivers. I would be smart to do that.

Instead, I was walking for warmth, avoiding open plazas in which I was well versed and instead taking solace in the narrow gap between parked cars and apartment doors.

I turned down an alley, a few winded blocks from the Duomo. I wanted to trust them, to tell them who I was and where I was going: I wanted to know, and to let them know who I was.

But my strangers didn’t doubt my story.

I was Allie, the artiste and I made music from words and I was touring from Spain and they, they were very drunk.

Alexandre implored me to stay.

“Bella, Bella! Come esta?”

I didn’t answer. Walk like you have somewhere to be.

“Bella, Bella, buena note.”

He kissed me, my cheeks, and shook my hand and pulled me close.

“Bella, Bella, where are you going,” he cooed.

            Somewhere to be.

“Bella, Bella, come home with me!” He smiled to Mikal, on the bike behind him.

            Run.

“Bella, we don’t live far from here.”

            One hand on purse, one fist for fighting.

“Bella, we don’t live far from here. Bella, Bella, we can eat and drink and smoke and sleep,” he winked.

            Run. Where?

He pulled the bottle from his bike basket, as if to prove something to me, as if his possession of liquor would convince me that he was telling the truth.

Say something, anything now.

“Oh, no, I must go sola, I have to be by myself, I have to go to paint the sunset.

Uh, the sunrise…”

I don’t recognize my voice.

“Princessa, you’re loca. Come on, come with me, come, come with us, come to my house.”

I feel shredded.

“Bella, Princessa, why won’t you come home with me?”

“Bella, why are you here? Where are you going?”

I was a shivering, heavy-footed tourist.

I did not own these streets.

I did not call them by name in proper tongue,

no, I was wrong.

These plazas, these alleys,

belonged to the night,

and los inebriedos,

and I was morning.

Love is a riddle.

I think.

It’s something I’m trying to figure out.

I hate the word “crush,” as it feels like I’m going to smash someone, and I don’t find attractions to be that malleable.

And the word “relationship” is thrown around so often that it could mean a relationship with a psychiatrist or a relationship with a psychiatrist.

“Dating” sounds like meeting behind the bleachers to arrange to have your cheerleading skirt slid off in the back of his car after football practice…so that’s not quite for me.

And love, well, I’ve been making public declarations of my trouble with that word and how “I don’t believe in love” since the ripe age of 13, but I’m slowly aging my way into that one.

Papa

I sat next to you on the couch with my hands around a paperback
Saccharine Blue Raspberry Jolly Rancher juice drooled onto the pages
You offered me a tissue, but only after Tiger finished the 14th hole and by then I had already sucked up the dribbles from my chin
I hugged you goodbye and smelled the burnt paper and tobacco for the first time

Then the summer of Extra Fruit Sensations Watermelon gum
I brought a few packs to camp with me and hid them under my pillow, sneaking a piece each night
One night, I fell asleep mid-chew and woke up with a sore teeth and an unavoidable sweetness on my tongue
I hugged you tight and you stunk of cold sweat and cowardice

I missed out on the Plaque Free Club at the dentist the week my parents were gone and you drove up to help
You brought me a love for dipped waffle cones with rainbow sprinkles and a mound of chocolate ice cream
We sat at a plastic lacquered bench in the mall and you helped dab at the trickles and trails on the corners of my plump lips
I hugged you long and you smelled like smooth acid in the air for the last time

salted carmel

you tasted like honey and smelt of Tide

barefoot and wrapped in the blanket, you pressed your lips into mine

my bones still weaken from the salt of your kiss

I longed for something sweeter than this

11/14/2012 prompt

He turned the key in the lock and opened the door. To his horror, he saw...the flames, dancing and spitting across the grizzly bear skin carpet. "Shit," he thought, as he dropped his cross-country skis at the door, slung his snow-drenched knapsack among the embroidered pillows adorning the hand-crafted rocking chair.

He dashed up the single stair to the kitchen, and flung open the cupboards below the sink with such force that he snapped one of the metal-coated plastic handles fresh off the door. He fumbled kitchen-sink cleaning supplies out of a scratched blue bucket with a yellow handle, allowing the bottles to drop to the floor. He kicked the drain fluid off to the side, and stopped for a minute to watch the cap pop off, such that when the bottle hit the row of cupboards after gliding across the bumpy linoleum floors, it oozed a little blue goo.

But the fire, yes, the fire.

He mistook the hot knob for the cold, and thus burned his hand once the water chortled it's way up the frozen pipes, then turned both knobs to full force and filled the bucket to it's brim. He hastily wiped his hand on the seat of his distressed 501's as he turned to face the fire with his bucket, full of lukewarm water.

So focused on moving swiftly back through the kitchen and into the living room, he neglected to remember the density and plasticity of the boots on his feet which were snapped into snowshoes mere moments ago. The kitchen mat, under the sink, scrunched up from the pressure of his 6'1" frame crashing to the floor, with his arms outstretched in order to preserve the contents of the bucket, but to little avail. Fortunately, however, his body spanned far enough into the living room that when the bucket popped out of his hands on impact, the water flung into the living room and onto the carpet, subduing the flames.

Clumsily, he got to his feet, and hastily returned to the sink to fill the bucket once more. Carefully, this time, he turned on his heels and walked briskly to the living room, down the single step, and proudly doused the last of the flames, which had progressed to the head of the carpeted beast.

He breathed a sigh of relief, then returned to his neglected knapsack, flipped open the top, loosened the strings, and retrieved the product of his errand: a fire extinguisher.

to say these three words...

is the ardor of a hot sun,

firing and baking on black asphalt at high noon on a tropical Monday

is the power of a horse's hoof, 

fence jumping and cantering through the muck of the pastures at dawn on a chilly Tuesday

is the concentration of a hypnotist,

focused on, squinting at, and dangling a twirled object by a string on a shady Wednesday

is the vigor of a hyperbole,

falsified and inflated in direct proportion to the number of retellings on an otherwise mundane Thursday

is the potency of a herringbone rain coat

fabric, twilled and woven in rows of parallel sloping lines, marching down 5th on a rainy Friday

is the intensity of a hummingbird's wing, 

flapping and trilling about a sweet honeysuckle bush on a soggy Saturday

and is the sweetness of a Hershey's kiss,

foiled and unwrapped by greedy stomachs and clumsy fingers on a relaxed Sunday night.