The Madness Vase by Andrea Gibson

Author:Andrea Gibson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: poetry, poetry slam, queer, political, andrea gibson, write bloody
Publisher: Write Bloody Publishing

Staircase

Across the water

a train moves slow against the trees

like the bow of an aching violin.

At my side a child

is begging her mother for milk.

The mother is a broken staircase with fresh paint.

Someday the daughter’s dreams will fall through

and I will turn my chest into an elevator

right before she tells me

she’s claustrophobic.

For now I say, “Listen to that train.

It is full of milk.”

The mother grabs the daughter by the sleeve,

pulls her down the beach.

On the shore the daughter finds a pebble

the color of a wedding gown,

puts it in her mouth,

crookeds her teeth,

is no longer hungry.

I dream I am a prince

or a knight

in shining removable armor.

My love’s last lover is a sword

I keep falling on.

I think too much when I kiss.

If love did not exist

I would be so goddamn sane

my poems would be billboards.

Suburbia would be enough.

I would not have to gut myself

to find my spine

crushed into powder

and brushed on her cheekbones.

My hair would not be a hummingbird’s nest.

My mind would not have to move so fast to rest.

I would not be in North Carolina

tearing flowers from the motel flowerpots,

searching for a love-me-not I can drop like a guillotine

on my own gallop chest.

It is incredible what kind of mess I can make

with a nine-hour drive and an unanswered text.

Yes, that is me

crying to the tollbooth man.

I say,

“In the ghost town of our love

there is a player piano

trying to prove it can make music

without being touched.

My fingertips miss her so much.”

He hands me no change.

Tells me there’s a Laundromat down the highway

that is also a bar.

I could make a clean getaway.

I could fall off the wagon and catch

a freight train of insanity straight through this mountain.

I could at the very least wash my clothes

so I could for once in my life know

what it’s like to have control of the spin cycle,

what’s it’s like to know

what the yarn knows of sweaters,

how to hold myself together.

Love, I know it is not sexy to make-out

with someone who so constantly

has their foot in their mouth.

But remember

I am also the one who told you

I want to feel you like the lifelines on the palms of Jesus

felt the nails go through.

I want to make popcorn with you, with the lid off.

Yes, that’s sexy talk.

Yes, I’m freaky.

Yes, I heard the bartender say

it is not holy water if it doesn’t burn going down

and you are hot

enough to keep me sober

on a Saturday night on Bourbon Street.

I told her,

“You have a heart of gold

and I am kneeling in your bloodstream

panning for the only thing that has ever felt like home.”

Across the water a train moves

slow against the trees, and I say, “Listen

to that train. Let’s follow it

wherever it goes.”

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