Letter to a Friend, Unsent by Rebecca Lindenberg

I haven't written        in a while

because I don't want to talk

                          about anything

I've been unable to stop

thinking about: the knotted thread

             of bad capillaries on my retinae,

money, or that my morning was ruined

by the unusual tightness

              of jeans around my thighs,

                                         like the obligations

of having a body

so ill-fitting, oppressively snug

             around an obstinate will.

And while       I don't want

             to be distracted

from this Duchamp thing

I've been working on—     I am

itched out of reverie

                        over and over again

              by this feeling I don't deserve

my raptures anymore.

So I'm sorry. I don't want to

             bring you down. It's unfair

to have to hear about needles

and envelopes and flies

                  when you might just have been

enjoying an iced tea outside

             and when I would prefer to tell you,

                          really,

there's a family of pheasant living

              in the massive cottonwood

we call the Tree of Life.

The male's red, green, gold plumage

                          makes him look

            like a Christmas present

I would want to give you.

So except “I hope you're well,”

                                                   that's all.

"The secrets that emerge from the psyche have no floor

They will get off on any floor when you least expect them to

They wear shadows that look like my mother"

Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch by Diane Wakoski

Foreword to “Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch”
This poem is more properly a “dance poem” than a song or chant because the element of repetition is created by movements of language rather than duplicating words and sounds. However, it is in the spirit of ritual recitation that I wrote it/ a performance to drive away bad spirits perhaps.

The story behind the poem is this: a man and woman who have been living together for some time separate. Part of the pain of separation involves possessions which they had shared. They both angrily believe they should have what they want. She asks for some possession and he denies her the right to it. She replies that she gave him money for a possession which he has and therefore should have what she wants now. He replies that she has forgotten that for the number of years they lived together he never charged her rent and if he had she would now owe him $7,000.

She is appalled that he equates their history with a sum of money. She is even more furious to realize that this sum of money represents the entire rent on the apartment and implies that he should not have paid anything at all. She is furious. She kills him mentally. Once and for all she decides she is well rid of this man and that she shouldn’t feel sad at their parting. She decides to prove to herself that she’s glad he’s gone from her life. With joy she will dance on all the bad memories of their life together.

for my motorcycle betrayer

God damn it, 

at last I am going to dance on your grave, 

old man; 

            you’ve stepped on my shadow once too often, 

you’ve been unfaithful to me with other women, 

women so cheap and insipid it psychs me out to think I might 

ever 

be put 

in the same category with them; 

you’ve left me alone so often that I might as well have been 

a homesteader in Alaska 

these past years; 

and you’ve left me, thrown me out of your life 

often enough 

that I might as well be a newspaper, 

differently discarded each day. 

Now you’re gone for good 

and I don’t know why 

but your leaving actually made me as miserable 

as an earthworm with no 

earth, 

but now I’ve crawled out of the ground where you stomped me 

and I gradually stand taller and taller each 

day. 

I have learned to sing new songs, 

and as I sing, 

I’m going to dance on your grave 

because you are 

          dead 

          dead 

          dead 

under the earth with the rest of the shit, 

I’m going to plant deadly nightshade 

on your grassy mound 

and make sure a hemlock tree starts growing there. 

Henbane is too good for you, 

but I’ll let a bit grow there for good measure 

because we want to dance, 

we want to sing, 

we want to throw this old man 

to the wolves, 

but they are too beautiful for him, singing in harmony 

with each other. 

                   So some white wolves and I 

will sing on your grave, old man 

and dance for the joy of your death. 

“Is this an angry statement?” 

                            “No, it is a statement of joy.” 

“Will the sun shine again?” 

                            "Yes, 

                            yes, 

                            yes,” 

                            because I’m going to dance dance dance 

Duncan’s measure, and Pindar’s tune, 

Lorca’s cadence, and Creeley’s hum, 

Stevens’ sirens and Williams’ little Morris dance, 

oh, the poets will call the tune, 

and I will dance, dance, dance 

on your grave, grave, grave, 

because you’re a sonofabitch, a sonofabitch, 

and you tried to do me in, 

but you cant cant cant. 

You were a liar in a way that only I know: 

            You ride a broken motorcycle, 

            You speak a dead language 

            You are a bad plumber, 

            And you write with an inkless pen. 

You were mean to me, 

and I’ve survived, 

God damn you, 

at last I am going to dance on your grave, 

old man, 

I’m going to learn every traditional dance, 

every measure, 

and dance dance dance on your grave 

                                                    one step 

for every time 

you done me wrong.

The Archipelago of Kisses

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don’t grow
     on trees like in the old days. So where
does one find love? When you’re sixteen it’s easy – like being
     unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There’s the first kiss.
     The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we shouldn’t
     be doing this kiss. The but your lips
taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.
     The I wish you’d quit smoking kiss.
The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad
     sometimes kiss. The I know
your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get older,
     kisses become scarce. You’ll be driving
home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,
     with its purple thumb out. Now if you
were younger, you’d pull over, slide open the mouth’s ruby door
     just to see how it fits. Oh where
does one find love? If you rub two glances together, you get
     a smile; rub two smiles, you get
a spark; rub two sparks together and you have a kiss. Now
     what? Don’t invite the kiss
to your house and answer the door in your underwear. It’ll get
     suspicious and stare at your toes.
Don’t water the kiss with whiskey. It’ll turn bright pink and explode
     into a thousand luscious splinters,
but in the morning it’ll be ashamed and sneak out of your body
     without saying goodbye,
and you’ll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
     on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Dim the lights, notice how it illuminates
     the room. Clutch it to your chest,
wonder if the sand inside every hourglass comes from a special
     beach. Place it on the tongue’s pillow,
then look up the first recorded French kiss in history: beneath
     a Babylonian olive tree in 1300 B.C.
But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection
     of function and desire. The I do kiss.
The I’ll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when
     I’m dead, I’ll swim through the earth
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

Jeffrey McDaniel

Dear Man Whose Marriage I Wrecked

If it’s any consolation, when your wife took me
in her mouth, I closed my eyes and pretended

I was a piece of wedding cake. I was the instigator,
bringing her flowers so often her co-workers

nicknamed me carnation hands. At night, I’d look
at the stars and slither my petals through her hair.

It was like we were on Mars–me staring over
her skull at one moon, her gazing at another.

What I’m really trying to say is I tumbled into her
arms like a thousand reluctant dominoes.

I mean, isn’t it odd–how you can buy a lap dance,
phone sex, or blowjob in a snap, but can’t

pay a person a dollar to just sit next to you
on a park bench and simply hold your hand?

Jeffrey McDaniel

The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy by Jeffrey McDaniel

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice
the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massive
insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end

of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt
in your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kinds
of women—those you write poems about

and those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought you
a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.
My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addiction

lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M.,
whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked
within the confines of my character, cast

as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan
of your dark side. We don’t have a past so much
as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power

never put to good use. What we had together
makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught
one another like colds, and desire was merely

a symptom that could be treated with soup
and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now,
I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy,

as if I invented it, but I’m still not immune
to your waterfall scent, still haven’t developed
antibodies for your smile. I don’t know how long

regret existed before humans stuck a word on it.
I don’t know how many paper towels it would take
to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light

of a candle being blown out travels faster
than the luminescence of one that’s just been lit,
but I do know that all our huffing and puffing

into each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trick
birthday candle—didn’t make the silence
any easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kisses

I scrawled on your neck were written
in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you
so hard one of your legs would pop out

of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d press
your face against the porthole of my submarine.
I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen years

to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding
off the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyriding
over flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolate

to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy
of each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraph
from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.

❤