Clearing

We met at the edge of winter and spring on a silent white clearing. The whiteness was bright and it hurt my eyes. My mind was all shadows and black spongy clouds of weariness. You were a child hungry for attention so we played a game. A game of telling each other about our lives. I thought we were allowed to be light-hearted about it. I thought we were allowed to invent, which is not the same as to cheat. I was surprised to have won truth instead. Now when I look at you I am still bewildered that I'm not playing out game anymore when I say: love.

Snails by Evan Cary!

Oh what it entails

when snails

set sail?

Coat

A love like a winter coat. Wrapped

in it. Snug inside it.

Itchy.

Tongue Twister by Evan Cary

Two bread beasts breed abruptly aboard a boat !!!

August

Missing you is like going on a long vacation to a whitewashed

town on the edge of a very blue sea and sneaking off to your

room in the big, bright house filled with friends to gaze at

the darkening sky alone.

Baobab

There's a woman sitting at a table next to yours. She's tired from the heat so she sits very still. Her arms are resting on the table; her head is resting on her arms. Black hair spills over her back like a prehistoric lake. You sit still, too, waiting for your order. The entrance door opens: a man walks in, bringing a memory of the throbbing heat from the street into the dormant ice age interior. He asks what your number is. A few thousand years pass. A baby baobab sprouts and grows into gnarly grandfather baobab before you reply: "78".

Bear

Last night I was a bear fighter. I was going to fight

a large brown bear in a ring. I was scared and the bear

was scared too. The crowd was cheering. You see,

I pass my time dreambear fighting when you're away.

Even poets pay bills, she said

folding the letter into a white-whiskered

dandelion.

Signpost

Sometimes one conversation is enough to propel into existence a chain of occurences. Such as love. It begins with something small and before you know it the heart is gathering momentum like a steam engine on rattling tracks. You realize you've come a long way from the first signpost question that now dangles at the edge of the map of memory:

"You are a tiny person. Do you float on lily pads?".

After

You get on the train at 6:45 giving off waves of afterlove frequency.

There is a glow under your skin as if you had dozens of very small Christmas candles in your belly. You stand out against the cold fluorescence of the metro. Eyes turn to follow you as you pass by in search of a seat. You sit down, oblivious: perhaps you pull out a book from you bag or sip tea from a green thermos. All the while. The car gradually fills up with your mind that is aglow.

(...)

Two heads: rolling

on the dusty miles of

dream.

Loss

There's nothing more sadly sensual than after-rain pine trees stuck into earth like paper umbrellas dropped 

into a cocktail glass. 

As I walk under dripping branches, thinking my thoughts, I see a black scarf on the concrete path before me. It belonged to a woman. She wears heels and perfect make up. Sweet perfume. She is afraid of growing old. The wind must have untangled the scarf from her shoulders. She walked all the way home from this little park with the ghost of the scarf wrapped around her neck. Before she realized it was gone. 

Metro

I walk past a man sauntering down the escalator like a sweet rotting Jamaican swamp. Puddles

of ghosts flicker around his feet. The distant rumble of trains sounds like a stifled yawn of an 

aligator. He leans forward with a grin; rests his fingers on my shoulder: "You are

a witch",

he says.

Bug

I wake up. I go to the bathroom. I see a sheet of paper with some scribbling on it and an upturned glass on the floor. I think to myself: strange.

Under the glass there's an imprisoned bug the size of a grain of sand. Roommate had left a letter next to it. The letter reads: "I found this animal in the bathroom this morning. I was afraid it might be a very small cockroach. I'm leaving it for you for closer inspection. R.".

I murdered it.

(...)

Existence of elephants(ensations)

manifested by a stampede of metaphysical

elephant feet rolling across my head.

(...)

Dolphin in a tree - 

Chinese man pokes

the air with a stick.

The act of writing

Is a game of turning

a chess piece

into a turtle.

(...)

You're an interval

(dis)harmonized

with my silence.

(...)

Morning: fog clasped

on the streetlamp's neck

like a wet glove.

(...)

I think of your tongue as a leaf, punctured with light, spinning

in the water.

(...)

The demon of disturbed sleep

broods

in bright daylight.