some parts of the fastest runner&other poems

mikeswanberg


You hide your art because you don’t want
To answer difficult questions oh love that is like me
Hiding my heart because you can not stand the sight
Of blood there is nothing to this the veils we
Place over their eyes wont cover anything

We are protecting our own open mouths
from flies we are watching a storm
on the water twist itself into being
do you doubt for a moment that
we wont make it home dry?
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The fastest runner has drawn everything into being
Her god her boy her work
Since she was just a little girl
The runner watches because she cannot touch
The runner laces shoes too tight because she mustn’t

The runner has heard it all before
An albatross dipping her wings in the water
So in a year her love might taste the salt
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paris in ruins

Oh when she gets to paris
Oh when the sun shines through
A chain link fence and makes territories
Of her empty hand then she will know
She should have never come

Cold for September in a low top
Smiling against the grain of this experience
Her hands now reaching into her purse
For something she is sure she forgot

There is no one to take a picture of this moment
She tells herself out loud
With All her territories in ruin
as she rubs her hands together for warmth
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I would wear a string of them
Those awful moments when you
Were just a girl all at once like a house
Falling into the ocean

I would climb the groaning stairs
0f memory and give some ghost
what’s left of my affects for you to not
turn for you to not be ruled by that year

But what could change you have painted
The eyes of some love I never knew
And for this I owe you everything
The fastest runner
The broken queen with a tongue that sings
Hallelujah

place whatever book you picked up today
Back on the shelf I know it is cold but stand
Naked in the peach streetlight near your door

be the one who runs the fastest from her worries
and her old life and her shadow
take each step as carefully as brushstrokes
until your feet are song on street

every second step a jump towards the cloudless sky
those destined for flight will find it everywhere
but sleep

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these boys come to pray at the alter
of her skin the intricacy of bone beneath.
a long curve of neck disappearing

what next they ask themselves
covering their hearts for fear she will
break in

I covered my own chest too when her words
Shook me deeply I wasn’t ready
To hit the floor but I did

And with as little grace as a lit cigarette
I Sputtered and danced right there
In front of everyone

What next I asked myself
My heart in my chest like a heart
What next