April 4-10, 2005: Kristina Marie Darling and William Mercer

Kristina Marie Darling and William Mercer

BECOME A POET OF THE WEEK
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Starlet 1  Heroin[e]   The girl is dressed in pink with feather trim it is sectioned like borealis in verifiable cartography — At night she dreams of the little blue   house on Grand where most have   wanted neon like rolling wires from the ground in crushing struggles   begging it becomes a morning train-way   calculations made a blank of needless signage   auroras    of diesel and THE JETS   it grips her like salvation once was Pasadena    static in the small gray room   of half-lit Revlon & her thin overpass   to the precise 1.3948 hrs peace   2  Marilyn   BEHOLD!  It’s death and blooming roses; pink teacups    from mother at an end; they scathe each fallen chain- link fence while you, the schoolboy, watched her slither through smoke and satin; are flawless as you felt it like electric lights The one you love    has lit the stage; white teeth gravitations    of dust & shimmer  Below her glitz you wait with promise   like   star-struck rhythm descend the realms of broken   chords — divinations   of tequila     stillness and fluorescent dawn.   3  House of Fame   The sky begins to shift   like razor-wire in rigid half-light   clouds cut through their gray to dark   windows and unsteady street-signs, it’s death   and nightly resurrection. On East 10th St she has lived   a life of Cherry Cola with menthol slims.     HOLLYWOOD 112 MILES     The door is closed     behind her. She knows    something   must happen  Cold light   is blazing through   the synapse of her skin.

Bathing She saturates in superstition, noxious to meliorism Sometime during our correlated loneliness, we stole one another’s words and smiled at the mirrored deception Casual recollections, rush, restricted, into the deep corners of the bathroom She smiles, a pure, crowded kind of smile, a night light whenever we’re all alone An irreversible hunger turns lascivious and is never satisfied only diluted Syllables crack the gray silence, christening me with an itchy impatience I’m wrapped around her like the rushing white of a raging river She tilts the blinds with a twist an innocuous light escapes the temporary dam, brighter at first Adjectives melt like chocolate outlining our fertile postures And everything is plural, people and places we never were that close So I run the bath water waiting for her to remove her clothes Wait fidget Her vagina emancipates the room, blights me with shame The geometric shave of her pubic hair reminds me how clumsy I am I want to reach out, grab her, almost hurt her but I already know she wouldn’t feel that Besides, I don’t own a thing she can take She enjoys reminding me of this When my mood is too optimistic for hers When she is teetering on the edge of her own personal purgatory There are boundaries and I’m drooling over them Just so she can taste feel the breeze before the storm Something less tropical and more depressing suits her just fine A smile doesn’t always work, I’m just a boy, just a little boy staring at the buxom breasts, smooth stomach, and lips that taste nothing Jealousy taps on an adjacent window, but I can’t take my eyes from her elastic sensibility My sweetest sympathies, floating, my deepest compassion melty into multiples of plenty Drops of chemically cleansed water gently entertains with beads of sweat My conscious craves again I hear nothing but the superfluous whispers of running water She turns the faucet towards aphonics, commas for toes exclamation points everywhere else I think I can hear her skin crying An adorning sob hiding behind the driiiipping cadence Elastic circles breaking against the curvaceous barriers that make her a woman She hasn’t asked yet, she hasn’t noticed my boyish stare, humid and voyeuristic, swallowing her whole with humungous sadistic pupils She asks with her eyes, if you want to you can come closer, explain your childish detriment with stumbling hands and an’ over-active adams apple She leans back into the penumbra of her brain Her heaven I don’t have to ask YES she answers with the swinging curve of her mouth The soap, barely bubbles below, the oily calm of her body has subdued its native reaction I can’t become unenriched, not like this, not now Milky, white, porcelain breasts sacrifice gravity before me, baptizing my perversion I could fall to tiny pieces of anticipation, echo in shatters on this cold floor Her knee breaks the surface, taking silence, feral droplets of water run down the side of the tub all the way to my feet I influenced it as it mopes towards my terrestrial awkwardness YES? I can’t as again My indecision is reflected before me, amidst a dying sun, behind a gleaming question The water turns dolesome with the monotony of exploring all the ins and outs of her body, cleansed and finalized with finesse A sigh! perhaps an ending, the turbulence is almost over and my feet are still dry Saliva thickens, I remove my shirt a weighted blink ensues The only resolution would be to touch her, now, here, because I could not imagine being more in love somewhere else, With such an explicit bliss before me A boy stands to the side completely engulfed in the rapture of bilious beauty His final preparation the lubrication of his lips Everything is so dry outside of her Her presence is soaked heavy and fatigued He finds a place in her arms forgetting everything squeezed from between And all he can say is YES Your just a boy? YES