By Drew Pisarra
1. Hard knocks after midnight
You wake me up to tell me that you’re drunk again
then talk of death. You talk as if we’re peers from some
same place yet I have never seen Fort Worth. You’ve
lost friends, lovers, and your dad. I’ve lost no
one really not for years. The aches we share have more
to do with what we want than what we have or had.
You understand the humps I don’t. I wonder do
you crave a bra of roughened hands like I do. Do
you feel the rend, the split of seams, the fray and tear
of loss not only as what has been but as what
might be. I’ve yet to lose a friend; I’ve not had
a lover; my dad isn’t dead. Instead, I talk
to you of touching objects, tell you sometimes clothes
contain a person’s past. The wardrobe’s full of ghosts.
You want none of it. You pound murmur down. You punch
holes in solace; searching for that shared grief; knowing
that if not death, sickness I have seen, have witnessed:
sore and lesions, sweats, that horrid, harping cough.
Liquor’s left this gentle lilt upon your tongue
that fails to soften words whose solid centers hit
like rocks until I want to pull you from my ear
and slip you down against me, feel a heat, that warmth
of contact, exploit comfort, fool myself to thinking
that by slipping each inside the other we could
black out—then flash! inside my brain, I realize
I’ve used sex in every way but how I want,
in every way but how I wait…for what.
What is desire. What is hunger. Who’s revolting,
you or me, and in which way. Quiet is my cheap trick.
It fools everyone. You’re thinking when I’m not.
Silence is the hammer. Watch. I hit myself.
I will not get involved. I will not get involved.
This curative, this necessary therapy,
survival tool, I badly need but do not do.
Hereby, the wire hanger slays another bitch.
The needle punctures yet another life and lung.
Let’s sit down on the sidewalk, put our cupped hand out
like beggars and hope one of the passing boys may grace
us with a kiss instead of coins. Friendship has little
to do with this. Get up. Wake up. Blood brothers let us
strive to be despite our never having made that final cut.
II. Austin
There’s a crazy man where I work who tells me, I’m crazy
because I don’t believe in God. Yes. I live in a godless
world and I work with the mentally ill. He asks: What do you
believe in. I have no sure answer and stand in a silence
that’s stupid until he asks whether I believe in love.
I quickly say, yes, I do, then wonder what is it I mean
Exactly. You see, I love you not like cakes and
candles, nor like chocolate hearts or single roses.
I love you like…well, right there’s the problem
for as the man at work says: You never know, man.
For him it’s a funny refrain but for me it’s a haunting
reminder that givens are things I remember:
how I stopped you on a highway bridge, and rattled you
with technical terms I didn’t know, and didn’t want to,
really grasping for a common ground. I remember when
projections of you swimming in the 19th century splashed
across my guest room wall. And when you were pregnant:
Halloween. (I was a pink vision of Peter Pan and the women
who played him.) I have sent you letters of my dreams.
Remember. Remember how we danced in a sea of black
and I was a bleached blonde beacon of light.
And the trip to the junk heap as scary as intimacy—
so falsely associated with a clammy hand on the knee
or wet hungry eyes and while there was that drug-induced
holiday that found us in bed and you were a feast
and both my hands were mouths that’s not what
I’m talking about. It’s that and more.
There’s a woman where I work who changes clothes at least
five times a day. There’s another who one Friday night
cut her leg up like mutton. Hey, look, I’m alive. We’re alive.
And while we’re alive on this planet, remember and savor
the memories that maybe already I cannot remember,
that may not be there in old age for old age might not
come or if it does may turn youth to a factual blur.
My journal, that record, might end up discarded,
discounted, or tossed in the back of a box and elude
the time capsule that says: We too were here.
Austin, your name is a city, your body, a land that
I’ve touched. Remember my pretty wrists and the simple
Sight of me as I look right now 100 miles away in your head.
III. Hands off and on
Deep inside me where the supposed answer lies
I’m moved despite your yawning conversation
a dialogue where I’m permitted thoughtful looks
not words or is it me who crumbles up inside
despite the touch to your tattoos I disallow
my fingers for I’ve seen that warning flaw
that little abscess shaky hands and heard
the frank confession stain perfection that
I search for.
We are simple thinking worlds
of art and commerce show a sheer perfection;
it’s a sheer veneer as clear as water and
impossible to grasp what your tattoos could
tell what enigmatic message beckons my fingers
like Braille to you tucking you and a T-shirt
inside your pants turning my brain to a camera
with a foggy lens.
How do I write love letters
to a stranger how can I kiss the details I’ve
yet to learn my fingers for filing the flopper for
pissing my heart still a functional pump how
many men have tempted disclosure unveiling
the bond misread as graft love I can write you
letters safe at my desk since I’m bereft
of stamps.
Outside my window you run to meet me
as I witness three stories above that day
replays your face opens like a flower mine
stays closed the perennial bud green doesn’t
burn the only smoke comes from a cigarette
rolled by a hand yours never touched my mouth
that wasted crop and hidden harvest love
never entered the picture only longing.
IV. Park
There’s the park. There’s the playground. There’s the
children’s fort with its southwestern wall, a funhouse
mirror of tin. At one end you see yourself fattened,
the other side lengthens and thins. I know you’d like
an elongation, short man that you are though certainly
no circus freak. And beanpole that I am I can’t resist
the sight of me flattened out to a thuggish block.
We used to live but a block from each other but now
we’re in odd parts of town. I relish that summer of meals
at your rickety table where we mimicked and tried on
the other’s expressions, found cares and woes reflected
in the other’s face as if we were two playful, primping
apes. I want to return to that time when the verbal
came second and bodily functions could cause a bit
lip or open laughs. Matter made all the difference.
The major difference between the Golden Age and the Atomic
is cause, not effect. Nostalgia is one great lie. Each era,
every season, a single day is a cycle repeating itself as
a variant of the same. Naught’s new; all changes. Mornings
find you at the gym: grunting, grinning at your pumped up
reflection. At home, I sit in the tub and soak. Everything’s
always been bone to me. The suds have long since dissolved.
Through murky water, I see the body I was born with:
angles, elbows, knees, this pencil neck. I want a life
of glass and steel. I want you in my city.
This city’s full of parks. These patches of nature are no
inconsistency. Our daily hypocrisies are one of the joys
of living, not one of its shames. The Absolute is for
computers, the world of the bit, the byte, the zero and
the one. There is no God, no greater thing than this, one
thing called life, the gift called love or friendship,
dearest, always, keep in touch, be mine. There’s too
many ways to part. Each act and item suggests its opposite
hence funerals can be parades. A graveyard could be a park.
Editor’s note: This is a reprint from Untitled & Other Poems
A literary grantee of the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation and Curious Elixirs: Curious Creators, Drew Pisarra is the author of You’re Pretty Gay (2021), a collection of short stories; Infinity Standing Up (2019), a collection of poetry; and The Strange Case of Nick M. (2021), a radio play commissioned by Imago Theatre. His poetry has appeared everywhere from the Whitney Biennial 2022 to Analog sci-fi magazine.
Northwest Indiana Literary Journal 