Chad Abushanab
Cherry Ripe
the cherry
grows breathing
you breathe on the desert floor
skinny in a basket
sold in dust for little more than due
you take them, there is something
wrong with your mouth
back to the car I ask you
what it is about the things
say something about a plant
in Tennessee.
drive is whispered bulbs
wind kicks up dust and paints
in the quieter spots the city
breathes with lights
westward skies and birds
as it takes shape in the whitewash
wheeled to the table-rock
there is quiet
and then, quiet
though a rustling of sand,
there is always the coral shade of rock
sunlit, pink as gasoline
and the long road past
CUT-RATE BOX CO.
the corral of horses walking circles
surrounded by bricks
towers like a bombed asylum
Grace's
three hits, a golden pine that shouts the moon through bogs,
the dark bridge and rising legs, the unseen river, all of it.
Wrote poetry of Baltimore. The skull as force of cage,
and so on.
Who are we to hold to our judgments?
I was a flank of muscle toning by ear.
You never meant to be divorced, or married
for that matter, at nineteen, scraped knees
and sweat from off the wood. Splinters during Balderdash
and arguments over books. The famous grandwhatever with the critics'
new resurgence, so I've heard, and art school, yes. They pitched you quite like that.
Against what can't be heard
or said, regardless of how we remember it,
minutes or seconds, half-assed western misconnections
or a husband who dissolved to milk,
the house's lights go out.
To bed, we drag regrettably
and quiet. But
there was another time maybe drinking,
naked by the ocean, an offshore rig, toxic lights, etc.
Maybe we touched then, or not...
there were others sure, there were others,
but I remember you had a broken nose and
a vicious smile, sixty ways of spitting in my face
with the most delicious hollow voice.
Those things now like pictures from a dirty magazine.