BY INDUSTRY AND INGENUITY
Whatever gowns you wear for the gala dances—
the fabrics exotic against fingertips, the bottoms flowing
behind your feet with your stride, hugging a shape buried
within, colors unnatural and explosive, hems spreading
out in designs common of ornate carpets or awnings—
these are all a language untranslatable to me, guttural
and non Latin. Are we trying to buck perception,
the enveloping sea? This is a culture of ornament,
of collections. Some contain gazes, some victims. Imagine
taking a limo around a busy block and rolling the window
down so just your gloved hand can wave at the pedestrians
as they look and try to find a recognizable face, understand
the way that whoever within has had her hopes realized.
It’s not terrible, but it sounds like it when we’re on one
side of the glass. Cover yourself in tinsel, let the police
figure out who the real victim is later. It might be months
or it might be days. Take somebody’s hand, show somebody
the safe door out of the dance. Fashion, colors, movies and glamour.
ABENDDÄMMERUNG
You lay back on the orange couch, and I’ll lay back
on the yellow. I feel like an enemy. All eyes upon
my back. The gears and pulleys directing each of you
much different than those directing me. We’re intricate
creatures of impulse and shot. Let me out. Who put up
these fences, who put up this razor wire. I can take it.
Give it. A circle of glass and the bulb hanging limply
on frayed wire above the street. Two energies meeting
and two energies ending. I know enough. At the airport,
there are planes departing for hundreds of cities, more.
Security devices that blow puffs of air from many
angles, that make us visible down to our skin, our bodies
pressed into our clothes, trying to escape. The billboard
displays a blonde family smiling at their new wicker
chairs. I didn’t sign up for this. I’ve never had a deep
cut, but I can imagine what metal on bone would feel
like, the alarms it would ring. Something wrong, move.
Give it to me. You don’t want to hurt me, and I don’t
want to hurt you. Not in particular. The dimmest center.
Look down past the gum and the paint. This is the best
way to live, of all the other uncertain varieties of sorrow.
MICHIGAN BLONDES
I’m not myself I’m not
well sinuses akimbo head
a pocket of rat traps every
where is a woman with
a full head a man who has
a full body can you trust
the constellation of each
body the ability of every
organ to move forward
endlessly to work in exact
harmony chains of molecules
colliding in trembling music
if somebody truly wanted
to I would be very easy to kill
Glenn Shaheen is the author of the poetry collection Predatory (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), and the flash fiction chapbook Unchecked Savagery (Ricochet Editions, 2013). Individual pieces have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Ploughshares, The New Republic, and elsewhere.
