Our Numbered Days Read online

  Our Numbered Days

  Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.

  Ambrose Bierce

  O, call back yesterday, bid time return.

  William Shakespeare

  Time goes, you say? Ah no, alas, time stays, we go.

  Henry Austin Dobson

  Come on, skinny love, just last the year.

  Justin Vernon

  And what of the dead? They lie without shoes

  in their stone boats. They are more like stone

  than the sea would be if it stopped.

  Anne Sexton

  ...a time to gather stones.

  King Solomon

  Time is making fools of us again.

  Albus Dumbledore

  The clock talked loud.

  Tillie Olsen

  What has died: lightbulbs; all of my pets; my

  family; the economy and thereby

  my predilection for bad art and alcohol; the part

  of me that allows me to love as though

  I were not falling; me in the future; me

  in alternate dimensions; everything

  that is not at this moment fucking: everything

  that will not be; my grandmother and

  my aunt; the you in my head, the me

  in my head and the you and me I have

  made you and me in my head. There is

  never enough time.

  You Can Look

  This is what it’s like to be in love

  with two people at the same time. This is

  what it’s like to get drunk in a mansion. You will never

  live here; don’t get so comfortable. This is what

  it’s like to live in a house full of antiques. This is

  what it’s like to kiss someone until you are

  no longer sorry you kissed them. These two people you

  love, they are two temps doing the same job, separated only

  by a cubicle wall. They are both trying

  to fill a hole that wasn’t empty in the first place. You keep

  calling yourself empty and you’re starting

  to believe it. This is what it’s like to smash

  your friend’s television. This is what it’s like to set

  fire to the clothes you are wearing. This is what it’s like

  to turn a suicide note into a paper airplane. This

  is what it’s like to turn a life full of exclamation marks

  into a blank page. This is the day you finally reach

  the cookie jar and find it full of seeds.

  This is what it’s like to buy the wrong kind

  of flowers. This is what it’s like to read your lover’s

  mail and find they are doing nothing wrong. Have you ever

  set a field on fire and called it a birthday candle? Have you

  ever punished a dog because you trained it wrong? This is

  what it’s like to build a wall in your living room.

  This is what it’s like to use bricks when you should have used

  sand. The one you loved first, you only kiss her through a hole

  in that wall. You describe the way your body would feel

  against her hands as though you are an ancient city

  she will visit one day. Every night you say it is

  the last night. This is what it’s like to sell your shoes

  in the desert. This is what it’s like to try to fall

  asleep in a life raft. This is what it’s like

  to say goodnight and mean goodbye.

  This Machine Kills Fascists

  The irony of the Woody Guthrie Center

  in Tulsa, Oklahoma is that it’s financed

  by oil barons. The Kaiser family helped build

  things like the Hoover Dam. The Kaiser Family

  are probably made of gold. There’s a “Woody Guthrie

  Music Bar.” The bathrooms are immaculate

  and modern. Nothing is covered in dust. Everyone

  in all the videos speaks with no accent, except

  for Steve Earle, whose first word was probably

  “Y’all.” Woody was, you see,

  not a great singer, painter, or even

  guitarist, but Woody did not give a shit.

  Woody drew cartoons despite having

  no idea how to draw. To call Woody Guthrie

  a hero is true despite the fact that

  a hero is supposed to have muscles

  and a destination in mind. If Woody

  were alive today he would be a crust punk.

  He would be both amazed and thankful

  that people still ride the rails and that

  there are still boxcars to ride in. He would have

  a pitbull named Pete Seeger. Woody would

  take one look at this museum and decide

  he needs to sleep on the floor. He would

  write some new songs on the walls. He would

  discover spraypaint and spray on all

  of his cans: This Machine Kills Fascists.

  Dust Mop

  This story requires some exposition, so here

  goes: my friend, let’s call her Mary

  because her name actually is Mary,

  works for Teach For America. She teaches

  at Todd County Middle School

  on the Rosebud Reservation

  in South Dakota, and she has asked us,

  us being me and my girlfriend, name given

  upon request, to teach a poetry workshop

  for her kids. Great. With that out of the way,

  I would like to now say this. I have been

  reading Sherman Alexie’s poems for a few

  years, and he talks a lot about how Indian

  kids love basketball. I, being a good progressive

  liberal socialist opponent of colonialism

  wanted to assume nothing about Indian kids

  and basketball, but then they asked me to play

  some five on five, so I will say that

  these nine Indian kids can ball. Humility

  is getting shook on by a 4’11” boy who is

  eleven years your junior. I tore my shirt

  trying to block Damante, and that is the extent

  of what I have lost to Native Americans.

  Song for Paula Deen

  You are the Four Seasons or the Elvis

  of food. Black folks have been doing this

  for years, but put a white face on

  it and suddenly all the butter won’t

  kill you. The butter, Paula. If no

  butter send lard. If no lard

  send fatback. Paula, I dream

  of you, greased. I hold my hand

  near your skin and find you are hot

  enough. Did we do this to you or did you

  want this to be done? I too have turned

  food into sex and women into food, so come

  on, Paula. Melt for me. Throw that hoecake

  in the frier. Make me America

  like I want you to want me to be.

  OCD

  The first time I saw her, everything

  in my head went quiet. All the tics,

  all the constantly refreshing images,

  just disappeared. When you have

  Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,

  you don’t really get quiet moments.

  Even in bed I’m thinking

  did I lock the door yes

  did I wash my hands yes

  did I lock the door yes

  did I wash my hands yes.

  But when I saw her, the only thing

  I could think about was the hairpin curve

  of her lips or the eyelash on her cheek

  the eyelash on her cheek

  the eyelash on her cheek.

  I knew I had to talk to her.

  I asked her out six times.

  In thirty seconds. She said yes

  after the
third one, but none of them

  felt right so I had to keep going.

  On our first date, I spent more time

  organizing my meal by color

  than I did eating or talking to her,

  but she loved it. She loved

  that I had to kiss her goodbye

  sixteen times, or twenty-four times

  if it was Wednesday. She loved that

  it took me forever to walk home

  because there are a lot of cracks

  in our sidewalk.

  When we moved in together,

  she said that she felt safe,

  like no one would ever rob us

  because I definitely locked the door

  18 times. I’d always watch her mouth

  when she talked when she talked when

  she talked when she talked. When she

  said she loved me, her mouth would curl up

  at the edges. At night, she’d lay in bed

  and watch me turn all the lights off and on

  and off and on and off and on and off

  and on and off. She’d close her eyes

  and imagine that days and nights

  were passing in front of her.

  Some mornings, I’d start kissing her

  goodbye but she’d just leave because

  I was making her late for work.

  When I stopped at a crack in the sidewalk,

  she just kept walking. When she said

  she loved me, her mouth was a straight line.

  She told me I was taking up too much

  of her time. Last week she started

  sleeping at her mother’s place.

  She told me that she shouldn’t

  have let me get so attached to her,

  that this whole thing was a mistake,

  but how can it be a mistake

  that I don’t have to wash my hands

  after I touch her? Love is not a mistake.

  It’s killing me that she can run away

  from this and I just can’t. I can’t

  go out and find someone new

  because I always think of her.

  Usually, when I obsess over things,

  I see germs sneaking into my skin.

  I see myself crushed by an endless

  succession of cars. She was the first

  beautiful thing I ever got stuck on.

  I want to wake up every morning

  thinking about the way she

  holds her steering wheel. How she turns

  shower knobs like she’s opening a safe.

  How she blows out candles blows out

  candles blows out candles

  blows out candles blows out

  candles blows out candles

  blows out—

  now I just think about who else

  is kissing her. I can’t breathe because

  he only kisses her once. He doesn’t care

  if it’s perfect. I want her back so bad,

  I leave the door unlocked.

  I leave the lights on.

  What the Cicadas Don’t Understand

  It’s September. Don’t you know, cicadas,

  that it’s September? The timing

  is never right, cicadas. We never get to see

  water becoming ice. Nothing

  is ever right. If you fall asleep you always

  wake up in the same place. You can

  learn to sleep but that won’t make you

  a sleepwalker. You can learn to love

  but that won’t make you

  a prisoner. You don’t know

  how to fix a bathtub drain, cicadas.

  You run your finger

  around the trap to clean out your long,

  long hair, but every time

  I tell you that, you don’t listen,

  you never listen,

  cicadas. It’s hard to hear music

  when you are always making it. You can’t

  douse a fire and then

  blame the ashes. You can’t sing when it’s cold,

  cicadas. Steam, cicadas,

  is the opposite of song, and remember

  when I told you we never

  get to see when water becomes steam?

  We have to communicate,

  cicadas. You have to tell me

  what you need before everything

  falls apart. Yes, you told me once.

  You can’t push once and watch something

  fall over. Nothing changes just because

  you want it to.

  Moving Day

  Today, as I was finishing the move

  across town (and isn’t it funny

  how cliché, the literal catharsis

  of throwing out all the things

  I no longer need: my Seasonal

  Affective Disorder lamp, all the

  egg cartons, you know, for the project,

  all of my ex-girlfriend’s stuff

  that survived the two previous purges:

  curling iron, candles, painting

  of her own face, swimsuit, bottle

  opener, blender, all the now-dead

  Christmas lights, all the food I can’t save,

  the chair, the older chair, the sheets

  in which the bad thing happened, the things

  in the bottom of the box that I will

  try to landfill but will, as always, keep: the toy

  my mother sent me that is just a squishy heart

  filled with larvae, the bicycle

  part I cannot identify, the handwriting

  I also cannot identify, the sheets in which

  the bad thing happened, the sugar

  bowl, the sugar, the textbooks, the

  instructions and signs and limits) a sparrow

  flew just over my feet, its wings beating

  against its own body, a sound not unlike

  applause, and it hit the ground, and because

  it was dead it lay still.

  Little Poems

  Everything You Ever Needed to Know about Silence

  You will never be more wrong than the first time

  you say “I love you.” You will

  mean it, sure, but you’ll still be lying.

  I Didn’t Recognize You without Your Glasses

  Though you chose to die five years ago, Alex,

  I still write your name on chalkboards

  and stray sheets of paper. I always

  leave out the E. I am not finished

  with you yet.

  How to Kill Yourself without Hurting Anyone

  Don’t.

  Things that I Hope Are True about Heaven

  That the radio always plays

  what would have been your favorite

  songs. That there’s always coffee

  if you want it. That you’re

  there. That it’s real.

  Still Life with Pills

  I too have wanted to open myself. I too

  have stared at a razor and seen in it

  a doorway. I think I am only still here

  because I was too scared to make

  the first cut.

  Clatter

  It is impossible to imagine a color

  you have not seen. Instead of dying,

  the jellyfish simply ceases

  to move. I complete five crosswords

  a day because it stops

  the panic. Trucks are downshifting

  on Main Street. Hair is partially

  composed of cyanide. Napalm

  is just gasoline and plastic. I am just

  carbon and bad timing.

  The First Snow of the Year

  Alex, since I’m still here, I have to act

  as though I meant to be here. Once

  it snowed, and it wasn’t that I felt

  great, because I felt awful, but awful

  is better than nothing. Depression wasn’t

  an endless grey sky, it
was no sky

  at all. I’ve got to go somewhere. I’ve got to go.

  It Has Been and Will Be the Year of Airports

  I don’t know where I will get

  the money, I don’t know what

  I will tell my friends, I don’t know how

  we will love each other in the nights of cold

  and quiet, but airplanes exist and will fly

  between where I live and where you are

  so hold on, I’m coming.

  I Don’t Know What “It” Is, But I Do Know where to Find It

  It’s in the light sifting through your bedroom window.

  It’s in the street when the whole world is pinched and slow.

  It’s in the basement where you left it.

  It’s in the ground. It’s in your head.

  Don’t Give Up the Ship

  When the winds are picking up, when

  the sea around you turns from blue to grey,

  when the sky grows veins of light

  before you, let your arms become sails.

  Keep the lighthouse at your back.

  I Cannot Answer You Tonight

  No one ever taught me how to pray,

  so I won’t. Instead, I’ll just say this:

  god bless the shape your head leaves

  in my pillow; god bless your insatiable

  hair; god bless you, though the hour is late,

  for you have come to me at last.

  Parking Meter Theory

  after Richard Siken and Paul Guest

  That the coins become something other than coins

  once the meter has eaten. Perhaps hamburger

  patties. That we, therefore, are also

  feeding the city. That the meters are a people

  and that they are so very patient. That the credit

  card-operated meters are an invasive species.

  That we know not yet what we do. That parallel

  parking is like making love but more difficult

  and in public. That the curb is the border

  of a great nation. Perhaps the curb is a shoreline.

  Imagine one sidewalk as England and the other

  sidewalk as France. Imagine parking meters

  with longbows and trebuchets. Imagine

  the poet imagining parking meters

  in stupid metal hats. This is, laughably, considered