I am trying hard

to think of things

that stay in one place

and get better. A tree?

I am not a tree.

Trees have almost

written all the poems.

I cut myself against them.

 

Nailing plywood down

on lower lines

to lay there, looking at porn.

I’d leave my house at night sometimes to look at porn in trees.

Even when very young.

I’d walk past a

retention pond of taggers

blowing their colorful

horned instruments.

Their illegible, foam names

like those of the animals.

Some of us have things

we don’t remember choosing to be.

These are the things I mean.

---

Sitting Outside Her House

Like man took fire

and invented light, so do men take women

into glass bottles, learn to switch their warmth

on and off. Sometimes men will sit for long

periods outside a women’s house, or her temple,

not wishing to be elsewhere, but praying that elsewhere

isn’t over yet. Maybe a man’s love

is also inside a glass bottle, that he hopes not to break,

that he stares longingly into on his work table,

hoping one day to sail. Mostly he leads his own way with it,

forgetting in such clarity

the light itself he is holding.

 What Stays After Falling Out

We don’t talk anymore but you left

your hat at my house.

And once after classes

you told me you dreamt of an angel,

that she asked you to tell three people of her coming. You were

crying. Our friends played Frisbee

in the bus lane, a neon disc

passing like one halo between them,

occasionally dropping.

And the nights driving. On 1626

I stopped at a red light with no one around.

You were incredulous, like how

could a color like red

mean stop for boys like us, who bite

the heads off centipedes

and peppermint liquor bottles, many

of which we refilled with water

and placed again into your mother’s cabinet.

I miss that world

you led my hand into,

with everything unclaimed

until we touched it.

Yell Fuck at Farmer’s Market

Twice now, it is windy.

A woman selling teabags

has run from her stand

to collect its contents.

She does a thing that most

of my great loves have done – yells FUCK,

then asks me to wait.

So I’m waiting.

The paper squares floating

are like copies

of the same tiny letter.

 

I wonder if the word Great

has ever preceded Love,

in my case.

If Love as moving expanse

 

is measured in paces,

or if it is more like

water being

held inside a room.

I guess it doesn’t matter.

A family selling peaches

has abandoned their post

to help the woman with her tea.

 

Their jars instead hold

suspended organs, misshapen

toads in formaldehyde.

 

I imagine even the good stuff

away. Like how being alive is more like

selling the thing you’ve made,

until it’s a good life.

Britt Luttrell  britt.luttrell@gmail.com