(draft, unfinished)

I lied to the neurologist
when he asked me if
I grind my teeth.
Post-appointment bus ride home I
realized it,
ran fingerprints from cheekbones to jawlines to find
the indentation of telltale tension.
The clenching creates a plethora of snake conception
from brain stem to tail bone,
wallflower of my walking
the shoestring of my voice.

And what comes after gray?
If I make it to sixty may I shave my head bald
may I braid watermelon seeds in beforehand and
plant the strands somewhere with adequate sun.
Yeah I’ve got stories
big and tender, microscopic,
stories that secondhand themselves in smoke
stories that smell like rust
stories that creak and groan
that wear wrinkles and yellows like badges of honor
lived in and worn
hovering still on rooftops I lived below
in the fossil of basements
a piece of paper
in my mother’s hope chest.

I leave a message with the doctor’s secretary–
“tell him I grind the molars to smooth stone henge replicas;
tell him the pressure makes my brain grin
tell him I heavy heart my practices,
digits to weakness unlisted.”
I’d rather hurt a little bit if it means survival
of the witness
and behind certain curtains I’m being busy
building back the charred corner bridges–

To the boy on the corner, eating sky.

Aren’t you full?
wrists runny with nickels pouring,
a crowd of one
galore galore,
juts of vein cresting
a concrete kneel with phone open
crushed pack of cigarettes and laundry smell
the red the bricks turn to flaunt the dusk.

You gnaw around clouds.
Fill the sink with bottle caps
labeled with sharpied dates, to remember.
Evidence of being anywhere,
line of cans on dresser, dusty with tabs popped and
drawers spilling flags you pull on–various sentence enders
like surrender, mating call, deflect and defense.
Never owned a television.
Instead, waits for night,
waits for the pollution left light
the drawn curtains across the street that flash like lightning,
curled up skinny on ledge selling the last pages of novels unread
reaching,
a young woman reading itineraries in the wind
hair whipped ‘cross penmanship–

As sure as one devours scent
as certain as bottom lip on flesh
raise one lighthouse elbow, sway slowly for ships
beckon wrecks with spilled beams,
he hunched in the half-dark singing
“oh sea, oh stranger, oh end–come find, come sting, come carry.”

Ode to Continual Loss
Paula Cisewski

1.
Finally, this plainness
I play host to. Play inside.

I could have sworn my
true purpose was to silently

lug the remnants of a city
around the world with me.

Yet, for now, I can believe
my life is big without

getting comparative or superlative,
can’t anyone?

Or, too,
I have had to bury
some of my homes.

2.
Did I mention that I grew?
That I began to take care?

Whatever I could have said in prayer,
wouldn’t it have been the same as anybody? As garbled
from any second tongue phrase book?

Dear God:
Where is the bathroom?
What is the special of the day?

3.
Eventually a boy was born unto me.
I recognized him.

He was my city and he is
my city and that

is not always fair.
How one habitates,

runs around making.
A city was born unto me.

Hypnotic boy happening
by with his dead father’s nose.

by with his missing uncle’s wavy hair.
My city is my exact same eyes

looking elsewhere. A mother’s
trained hushing. A boy

who has borrowed nothing.
A son was citied unto me.

He moves forward to where
I have always and never lived.

4.
Dear God,
I am sorry that I get bored.
I love those trees.
Where are we?

5.
Plus I like to slip my hand inside
pockets of coats in the thrift store.

Tall aisle of pockets. A subway token,
a neatly folded prescription slip.

A body lives inside a single day, then
The finished days file one by one

to live inside the barracks of a body.
There’s a turf war on.

I want to call them split ends. The little fractures wrinkling through along the surface here or there–not really widening old
fissures, not really starting new ones. Just tiny things, crackling across like the limbs of bare trees during the
appropriate season.

The good and the bad start them. Like a couple getting on the bus and splitting up their seats so they can each befriend a new
stranger. It happened, I witnessed it. Like the new things I find out about mom that aren’t new at all–things from when I
was a kid that I can do nothing about except get angry, an anger I have to throw in a general, anonymous direction
because the hurt is so buried, so commonplace, and kind of forgotten. Like meeting my new nephew and letting him
sleep in my arms for as long as he wants. Like being sober.

I’ll stay in earth tones with a fingerprint of oil in each elbow bend. I try to remember being small, and it seems so recent and
so untouchable. What am I archiving for? At some point the memories became stories. At some point I stood in a
kitchen and made myself dinner, ate in the quiet of a rebellious sun beam. Part of me feels the need to make note of
everything. The harm is gone. I’m just taking it in.