Amanda - Selective Poetry

An Addiction (in Addition) to its Host

 

Propane became the drug of choice, midway 

From skin it stuck to coats of varnished mourn— 

A mouth dispelled, it burbled with decay 

Emerging late, without his ichor, born: 

Declared those angels—claimed those creatures—dry, 

From tar he broke that succulent deprive, 

Such swines detained leak that oppressive cry, 

Experimenting merely to survive. 

Research borrowed from laws ignored the brand 

For gasoline so dreaded his return; 

Each morsel scarfed from salivated hand 

Relieved this mascot suffering such burn. 

From bulging lips with sunken eyes ablow, 

His breath, abating, stinks of status quo. 

 

 

 

Sticky notes on the fridge: 

Tell mom you love her 

 

I was so focused on being okay 

I forgot to see my mom, today, 

I forgot the way her skin felt when she let 

me play with her fingers splayed over the 

cotton-pilled couch watching infomercials 

on cable TV, drenched in ivory 

quilts, pacifiers, rice milk ice cream, and 

soda water: always sunny, honey, 

but I remember funny things, like the 

dandelions pluming from French back doors, 

poking holes in the feet, dark oak panels 

cracked, supinated, sorrowed through, by the 

tiny tempted twilling teeth, nuzzling 

for safety, one last meal, for tomorrow’s 

coming day— 

I am so focused on being okay 

I forget to hear what mom might say 

curled on the couch, crescent moon with blue 

acrylic tables in her reach, she will 

complain of becoming grandma, tucking 

needles and thread behind her ears sewing 

my coat, acquiescing me to lay there 

coddling me tight in tender twine, it’s 

fine I forgot to keep the texture of 

her hair freshly washed, marbling with my 

skin, one million fiber counted linen: 

I braid my fingers in it, I slip them 

out again— 

I’ll be so focused on that dread 

I’ll forget to love my mom, instead. 

 

 

Ask me tomorrow why we watch eclipses, 

full-blown apocalypses, and aren’t afraid. 

 

“we can be all poetic and lose our minds together” 

——(the last of us) 

 

If I tell you about the day 

the sun died just to be reborn again 

I don’t need you to say 

it’s regrettable that it happened 

I need you to hold my hand and gaze 

unblinking into the grave 

where my eyes have dwelt 

in the shadows that came after: 

I need you to reach deep 

until the sucking of the void 

looks real to you the way it’s real 

to me, okay? 

 

I need you to just scream with me, 

to go feral in the stagnancy, 

I need you to say oh my god man 

that’s fucked up I need you to pick 

the fragile things up and throw them off 

the cliff with me, I need you to know 

I’ve heard the warships crying 

a hundred thousand million times, 

trust me, I want you to know I’ve seen 

It all, already: 

I watched the sun rise one morning 

just to fall back down the bend, 

and I came out on the other side 

more or less alive again. 

 

So I’m okay to grab in the silence 

I know how to hold you up, keep you steady 

I’ve lost my mind to the science 

at least a billion times already 

and it’s okay for you to do it, too, I need 

you to tell me let’s just fucking 

go insane, let’s tear shit up, let’s build a plane 

from the ground up just to prove we can fly 

no matter what happened to us today. 

 

Because what else do you do 

when the sun goes down? 

we trust, without proof, 

that it will rise back up again. 

 

And I need to know I’m not alone, soaking in the dark 

I need to know there’s someone with me 

in the home I built to see the sun on the dawn 

it died for the trillionth time and was replaced—— 

 

so if I tell you about the day 

that I saw the sun defaced, 

I want you to know that nothing has changed 

it’s just a little furniture that got rearranged, 

and I need you to just go rabid together forever 

with me, 

Okay?