Spotting
BY DSD
I see
you
you
you
while spotting in slippers
practicing fouettes
around the kitchen.
You’re remaking your cappuccino
and comparing the chords of Paul Simon
to tropical fruits.
I told you I hear colors
and that I think sweat
rolling down a lemonade glass
looks like a lullaby.
You told me how you like to watch the black-eyed suzans
weeping
to the tisking of April showers.
I hear
your
your
heartbeat under my lips
when you’ve biked back from the fields
with friction burns on your forearms
from the corn leaves.
We get to the penches
through wafts of garlic bread
careful not to kick
the homemade tomato paste.
And when I told you that gravity was greedy
as we did lifts
in the theatre alley
it released me.
Like you were the moon
and I was surrendered to you.
Girl, a man said, you should make your life story into a poem.
Oh honey. I taste poetry with each breath.
Bare Shoulders
Something about the waves kneading the sand
and the moon
crouching behind an organic market
and the old song
my mom would bounce me to sleep with
puts the whole world together in my lap.
My hair is up
in what I imagine is a graceful bun.
I am alone on a massive lovesac
and I imagine that I look
sweet when I bounce my bare shoulders
with the beat.
There is a beautiful self-consciousness
at 2 AM.
Nothing makes me feel more alive
than holding a cone between my hands
while cream runs over my fingers
in intricate, sticky ribbons.
I have nothing to feel
but my own skin
and no one to please
but the man in the moon.
Here I realize that the world
is not always shattering with tears
that I am not always crushed
between demands.
Life can be as simple as
a Paul Simon song
and the hush of a palm leaf
while an old poem waits under your fingertips
and the rows of apartments
sleep.
DSD is a 19 year-old college student who will soon graduate from Drake University in Iowa. She does not like pina coladas or getting caught in the rain, nor did yoga ever work out for her.