Alison Mandaville ----- two poems

Anne the Fig

Damn. Is lonely. Is oldest

and only one. Is alive. And

others is half. Alive. Clotted

with love. And blood. What

doesn’t kill you, weakens. Who —

don’t ask the doctor. How. Long.

Brother: In Bed. Wondering:

Is this my last nerve? Is this

vein just POP? Is the cells

circulating? Or not anymore.

Unicycling. One leg working.

One groin netted against

the gravity. Thinner and thin:

red is still the biggest color they

won’t let you wear in Fresno.

Central

I have been so drunk

my heart is frantic for you,

frantic I say. Like the stars

in Fresno, seen, pollution

and all. Biked at two: twenty

am after maybe just one two

many but not quite enough

of anyone because they know

each other and you don’t. Oh

this is harder at forty-nine

than it was at thirty and Van

Ness waits in the dark like

camping, or a park shuttered

against the human. Budgets

and houses and street lights

wait for no man and one woman

stands at that corner, taco pop-

up behind her at an angle, football-

ing teens’ street throws, like con-

stricted trampolines, the edges of light

absolute: my dear I wish you

were here and I wish you liked

the funny way people always find

a living at the dirt side of nowhere.