Friday, October 17, 2014

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.

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