A Bit of Poetry

Translocation
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“Our love will be a mountain,” I told her.

It will take ten thousand years
to accumulate enough soot
in its heart to destroy
                         sunrises—
it will stand hunched-over and awkward.

We’ll wake up one day
with our stomachs stretched
like rivers, over its heart.
I like to think of mountains
when I think of people:
the time it takes for them
to grow in your mind,
the uses of snow in cruelty,
hills in silence.

On the outside, older poems are running as far as they can into the ocean.


“Our love will be a human being,” I told her.

There will be organs and nerves for
complexity. Purkinje Fibers will
transmit trembling from lips
to the core of the heart.
The synaptic cleft, an abyss
between your nose,
                    mine.

Eventually, tumors will grow
on this body, much like chain-
smoking entrepreneurs with blue
eyes. Our spinal chord will cry
loudly in the mornings.

Older poems will be red blood cells, empty membranes on circulation, feeding others.


“Our love will be a city,” I told her

There will be parks 
but oh so          naked,
the streets will kiss 
and merge frequently.
We’ll have fruit stands,
 even restaurants.
We’ll have arteries 
of buses and railroads, 
always crowded, 
waiting for a green light
or a moment to explain 
                  how their afternoon went.

But the city grows, 
uncontrollably, with asphalt
over lilies and other 
parts of the earth. 
It will eat up the rivers, 
it will fester and coagulate 
like a wound.

Our older poems will be trains, always leaving for the countryside, never returning.

and then what will we have, 
our mountain trembling, 
our body decaying, our city dying?

“There will be valleys, 
  meaning, other people:
                for the mountain to spy upon,
                for the body to sleep upon,
                for the city to grow into.

Our older poems will gallop eternally out of the valleys, into the tundra.”