22

I’m sitting with a cigarette and a

copy of Brighton Beach Memoirs

and it’s hard to focus

because it’s better to see it

than to hear about it later,

and lunatic prophets laugh down the street,

hysterical with the hum of engines

and the weight of smog

and I think of your mouth,

how it stretches over your teeth when

you grin, and how your breath

makes my neck melt into my collarbone

and I want your ears beneath my lips.

Another car passes,

and I am alone

surrounded by ghosts with their own stories

and I can’t focus on reading someone else’s words

when all I want is to write my own story

in the pores of your skin.

Someone got stabbed in my apartment building

last night, but I wasn’t there, and

it’s better to see it than to hear about it later.

I wonder if people will read my words only

when I’ve died,

because everyone loves a dead poet,

and it makes no sense

to me because

it’s better to see it

than to hear about it later.




Rachel J. Clark