Hypothetical Histories

Main Poetry Page Some Other Poems

False Start

It began before that day with making fun of my name.

It began at the bus stop before the bus

and then crawled into the bus with them

when they would take turns,

turn and grab quick.

It began because they liked to get a grab.

It began when I was good at being quiet

because being quiet was what I was good at

and being anything less would draw attention.

It began because I didn’t want to draw attention.

It began that day but not with my name,

at the bus stop before the bus.

It began with grabbing the snow,

it began because I became part of everyone

and not the part being grabbed.

It began because my name is less interesting than snow.

It began with the throwing of snow

and I had the miserable luck to

have good aim that day.

It began because of my miserably good aim

and the snowball that hit his ear.

It began with his ear being red,

so maybe it began with blood

but I don’t think he was bleeding that day.

It began with his ear being red because it was cold

and had just been hit with a ball of snow.

It began because he yelled ‘bitch’,

because his shot brought the other boys running.

It began when everyone was playing

and because I was smiling

but not because I hit him.

It began because I was eleven and a part of everyone.

It began with them running,

because I was a smiling bitch.

It began with them at my four corners

batting at my arms and stomach

and with my coat being open.

It began because I never closed my coat.

It began with my coat open even though it was snowing.

It began with them batting at my arms and stomach

and then reaching into my coat, grabbing at my breasts.

It began with them grabbing my ass

with them reaching between my legs

and finding the spot near my crotch where

my thighs had worn the fabric thin.

It began because I wore second hand slacks.

It began with them tearing.

It began with them reaching between my legs,

It began because they found it funny

that they could rip my pants.

It began with the girls watching the ground.

It began when I screamed for them to stop.

It began because the ground was

more interesting than what was happening.

It began with the girls watching the ground,

with me running, with no one coming

after me, with no girls following to see if I was okay.

It began with nobody home at the nearest house

or at the next or the next.

It began because no one was at home.

It began when I took off my clothes at home

when I knew I knew better than to smile.

It began when I looked at the tear,

when I wanted to throw the pants out

but took out my mother’s sewing kit

and stitched what was ripped.

It began when I learned to sew.

God And

I grew up with God, knew Him as a child.

He was a fickle fuck, slipping me Twinkies

under the lunch table because

He knew I loved them,

then pointing to the spot on my shirt,

hitting my chin when I looked down. Gotcha! Oh

He got me, when no one was there to see,

we’d hang by the rope swing on the river.

He was never afraid to jump,

He called me chicken shit, mouth like a sailor, God,

but once when the water was high after days of rain

He yanked me to the shore, though I don’t know how.

He was skinny, G, one of those babies,

ladies called 'little man’, not much to look at

until sixth grade when He shot up and filled out,

full beard by 13. The girls loved Him and

He could of lost it in 7th grade.

He said He loved everyone, but me,

I was the one He had eyes for, just not in school.

He saved me for Saturdays by the river.

He’d wrap his arms around and hold me

under until I wasn’t sure I would ever breathe again

and I could feel how his hands slipped

and his body got hard, could hear what

He was saying: more than the son He’d have

more than His very spirit, I was His. Or how one day

He pulled me between the trees that lined our street, said

He was the lover of my soul as

He unbuttoned my shirt and reached up my skirt

and that’s when God and I began.

2 Samuel 13 - You and I

1 In the course of time, I fell in love with You, the beautiful sister of Him son of His and half-sister of I.

2 I became frustrated to the point of illness on account of his sister You, for You was a virgin, and it seemed impossible for I to do anything to You.

3 Now I had a friend named Them son of We, His’s brother. Them was a very shrewd man. Them asked I, "Why do you look so haggard morning after morning? Won't you tell me?" I said to Them, "I'm in love with You, my brother Him’s sister."

4 "Go to bed and pretend to be ill," Them said. "When your father comes to see you, say to him, 'I would like my sister You to come and give me something to eat. Let You prepare the food in my sight so I may watch You and then eat it from her hand.' "

5 So I lay down and pretended to be ill. When the king came to see him, I said to him, "I would like my sister You to come and make some special bread in my sight, so I may eat from her hand."

6 His sent word to You at the palace: "Go to the house of your brother I and prepare some food for I."

7 So You went to the house of her brother I, who was lying down. She took some dough, kneaded it, made the bread in I’s sight and baked it.

8 Then You took the pan and served I the bread, but I refused to eat. "Send everyone out of here," I said. So everyone left I.

9 Then I said to You, "Bring the food here into my bedroom so I may eat from your hand." And You took the bread You had prepared and brought it to her brother I in his bedroom.

10 But when You took it to I to eat, I grabbed You and said, "Come to bed with me, my sister."

11 "Don't, my brother!" You said to I. "Don't force me. Such a thing should not be done in Here! Don't do this wicked thing.

12 What about me? Where could I get rid of my disgrace? And what about you? You would be like one of the wicked fools of Here. Please speak to the king; His will not keep me from being married to you."

13 But I refused to listen to You, and since I was stronger than You, I raped You.

14 Then I hated You with intense hatred. In fact, I hated You more than I had loved You. I said to You, "Get up and get out!"

15 "No!" You said to I. "Sending me away would be a greater wrong than what you have already done to me." But I refused to listen to You.

16 I called his servant and said, "Get this woman out of here and bolt the door after her." So I’s servant put You out and bolted the door after You. You was wearing a richly ornamented robe, for this was the kind of garment the virgin daughters of the king wore.

17 You put ashes on her head and tore the ornamented robe she was wearing. You put her hand on her head and went away, weeping aloud as she went.

18 You’s brother Him said to You, "Has that I, your brother, been with you? Be quiet now, my sister; he is your brother. Don't take this thing to heart." And You lived in her brother Him's house, a desolate woman.

19 When King His heard all this, he was furious. Him never said a word to I, either good or bad; he hated I because I had disgraced his sister You.

Our Hypothetical History

Cradled in the catapult, rubbing against each other

for warmth, it was all we could do not to fuck. You

there, and me, there, and the rubbing, I mean, really.

And just moments before it was random circumstance

we met, finding each other there about to be thrown

against something, at the time still a mystery what.

It was all excitement and angst, such anxiety some part

of me was always pacing, tiny trembling, mouth chatter.

We worried it was only a matter of time until we were

pots calling the kettle an emotional whore, that we

would rub each other the right way and so early

on in the story. Our start would be

much like the end: bodies full of friction,

refusing to bend into each other. You were

always quoting Donald Davidson: action is

who, is what, you do with intention. So I became

your means to an end, your teleological vocabulary.

The terror of heartbreak was how love controlled

Hegel, much like fear of death and the government.

Our problem then, was that I have never been

afraid to die, shooting myself in the foot on a

daily basis. We rushed in and compromised any

given situation, it was just our asshole way. We

were going on instinct we could almost see.

But there was bound to be one of these as well:

a garden in your head, where you sat and read

the lines of my face like letters written before

this was born. Suddenly understood, here was the

happiness we had heard of, a dervish, we danced

in circles, the dust from our feet like rings of

smoke, like rings. We were silent but for the

panting, were melancholies out of bed and twirling,

were open mouths, were tongues of fire held over

each other’s heads. You called me Eden and

I said, Well, hello Hades.

You never were good at beginning

a foundation for any building. I looked

up and you were a hammer nailing me

between two beams. I looked up and you

were waving at me from a distant tree.

Now I climb down the stairs, linger on the

landing and memory becomes a hundred

splinters in my feet, rotted wood, grey and

swollen, like an abandoned body—I stand still

in the moment or chance falling through you.

A house divided cannot stand itself, but

What a beautiful building, strangers said.

We began to look like a facade, became

feigned intimacy. You wanted away but stayed.

So I returned from the big capitals, bags under

my eyes, and my jaw slack as a sail. Our eyes

were copper, past patina, dull & rusted coins

clanging against each other as we stared—

thin rings of remembrance—iron tang at the back

of my mouth. Your taste always was distinct.

Your mouth mightier. Your tongue sharp,

it was a difficult sword to swallow,

au bon pain.

We’re mostly excess fingered identities

we’re wet clay we’re words rubbing our

mouths across the page black ink rubbing

tentacled letters across each other fucking

books from the shelf with no intention to

read feeling the name on the spine lettered

vertebrae failing to find a coherent theme

stabbing nibs in your inkpot heart we laid

with life soaking into the ground love planted.

Pick me.

Our worth was figured by weight and you

were throwing up regularly to maintain your

lack of self-confidence, meanwhile I had

eaten nothing for days but my own two feet.

The libations, the quantities of meat, but the

couple that weighs together, stays together, so

we became comfort food, fed only on each other

and wasted away. The couple that prays

together stays together, so we became

incarnations of what we had always wanted

but never seen, sacred words crossing our

teeth’s barrier, tears tempted to take leave

of sorrow, to believe we were worth believing.

I made each bump of your back a rosary bead:

pray for us lovers now and at the hour of our death.

Darling, are you praying? Are you?

Or am I too far fallen from your flock

and understood as one not to wear wool?

I say You like weak coffee and you yell

Do you mean to say weak like me? I mean

like me. I’m finding people in people all

the time now and I’ve found parts of you

in me. There are twelve things to tell you,

ten ways we are alike: one, faith, two,

fear of failure and our family, three, you

feel entitled to me and I appropriate your

body, four, fat fear, five, fear of sex so

much so we never stop. Six, our bodies

with corresponding stretch marks from the

love we’ve lost, and too quickly, seven, you’ll

never see us on a beach vacationing, some

things are too sunny. Eight, alcohol and nicotine.

Nine, you are a bastard and I’m self-sabotaging.

Ten, when we sleep we wear nothing.

You have seen the yellow in my green and

unravel the lonely shroud I weave, each

night remaking me and all our cries, the long

labor of lies, are rugs on the floor.

Singing falsetto, I was undressed

and had your taste for the sacred:

Hasidic gartels and sidelocks,

the Amish in their handmade frocks,

those men in mourning, I’ve begun

mentally undressing. Communion

wine and unleavened bread, you

even gave me a taste for sleeping

with the dead.

Yes, I felt wildly nostalgic

when everyone began the circle

jerk and the belly dancer appeared

from nowhere.

I mean something in you makes me minority.

Something in you makes sacrilege of me.

Everyone was nicked at the neck and

bleeding. Hearts held like steak

against the wounds to keep them from

swelling, though a muscle can only hold

so much. Hearts hanging. Hearts hung—

Listen, today is terrible, I have forgotten

why I came down the stairs, what I wanted

to tell you, an old man—I have lost even my

gender.

We’ve just met and already I am mourning.

Misanthropic, memory is man on my back

and each thrust a month I have been waiting,

pretty latter-day Penelope. I want to think

a bed should be like the one in The Odyssey:

unmoving.

Now Emerson keeps sneaking in,

slipping his hands into me as I sleep:

our emotions do not believe in each

other. Anger has no room for peace,

peace no place for anger. We shouldn’t

recognize pain then with all these endorphins

or are Emerson and Wikipedia conspiring liars?

Is love a matter of faith or forgetting what the

other said and next to whom he now sleeps?

For a time you said you could sleep next to me

only with

clothing and the shearing got ugly.

Clothing, yes, why did you suddenly

insist on remaining dressed? You liked

to say Love is overrated, a luxury for

the developed country, achieved by only 3%

of the world’s population but consuming 82%

of the world’s mental energy. But sex, now

that is something. Here we have ten ways

to smile, but twelve ways to communicate

just how overrated love is:

One, you said She fit like a glove, but fingered

me; two, I say I am Odysseus and you Poseidon’s

sea; three, finding the shoe that fits; but four,

I said to come all over, not walk all over, me; five,

we both liked you more than me; six, Darling,

there are a few overrated things worth having,

among them: you, love, me; seven, you say nothing;

eight, I said message, not massage, me; nine,

actually sleeping; ten, txt sex w/o emoticons;

eleven, barely awake before you begin reweaving;

twelve, in the heat of the heat moaning Circe.

When everything was a wolf in sheep’s

wool and you Greek to me, I became

nothing but coitus, a coy chorus:

Listen closely to the different parts

of me all saying the same thing: you,

love and me, love, yes learning ancient

languages in tandem, speaking in

tongues, the different alphabets

of our bodies but the same linguistic

construct: sinewy syntax of sex.

There was that time in the middle

between the trees, sharing cigarettes.

Our tongues, tobacco leaves, nicotine

need rolling into each other’s mouths—

only the tip of which exists now, the ash

of us, and what you would say: you’d be

the lover of my soul—now with nothing

for the less eternal. Nothing for these

hands or breasts, nothing but that cliché

in your chest where a heart would fit nicely.

Hear this clink of teeth against the glass,

baby? That’s the sound of me still in love

with you. Did you hear my teeth knocking

against the sink? That was me drunk and falling

in love. You’d reach for your car keys, clink,