It is our usual holiday.
You ask if you can trouble me for a glass
of whiskey. Someone asks me offhand
about the hate in my spine. I say,
Fuck babies, and my mother
didn’t like the flowers I bought her
and do you see what I mean?
My mother is always a different person.
These are standard answers. But lately
in pale light I examine bruises
I hope are from you, teach myself mechanics
of clear evenings and I am
steeped in insults for you.
I want quiet alcohol
untouched by light and fingertips,
settled safely under half-moon,
crests dilating with slow breath.
There are no feelings here
and I do not want to go home. Soon
we will be underwater, life forms
in air pockets. And I do not trust
this place to scoop us up, teach us
to move, hips following current,
arms like pillars expanding and stretching
under highway glow. You know
I always cry at holidays.
Morgan Parker lives with her dog, Braeburn, in New York City, where she is an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU. She holds a BA in Anthropology and Creative Writing from Columbia University. She is the recipient of the Arthur E. Ford Poetry Prize, and her work has been featured in The Columbia Review, The Blue & White Magazine, and on Scatteredrhymes.com.
me, too. me, too.
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