Daphne Gottlieb: "Why Things Burn"

why things burn

My fire-eating career came to an end
when I could no longer tell
when to spit and when

to swallow.
Last night in Amsterdam,
1,000 tulips burned to death.

I have an alibi. When I walked by
your garden, your hand
grenades were in bloom.

You caught me playing
loves me, loves me
not, metal pins between my teeth.

I forget the difference
between seduction
and arson,

ignition and cognition. I am a girl
with incendiary
vices and you have a filthy never

mind. If you say no, twice,
it's a four-letter word.
You are so dirty, people have planted

flowers on you: heliotropes. sun-
flowers. You'll take
anything. Loves me,

loves me not.
I want to bend you over
and whisper: "potting soil," "fresh

cut." When you made
the urgent fists of peonies
a proposition, I stole a pair of botanists'

hands. Green. Confident. All thumbs.
I look sharp in garden
shears and it rained spring

all night. 1,000 tulips
burned to death
in Amsterdam.

We didn't hear the sirens.
All night, you held my alibis
so softly, like taboos

already broken.

close

Daphne Gottlieb: "Everything She Asks Of Me."

everything she asks of me

So, I’m dating Marilyn Monroe. We’re living together, actually. Right now, she’s sitting on the white couch with the black stains, watching me write this. What are you writing? she wants to know. A love letter, I say.

She’s eating grapes. She’s really into them right now. One by one, she sucks them into her mouth with a little pop, crushes them between the whitest of teeth with the gentlest of violence. What’s the opposite of fruit? she wants to know.

I don’t know, I say. Meat? She purses her lips, considering. No, she says. I don’t think there is an opposite of fruit.

We are both girls, true, but it’s like saying that a nectarine and a watermelon are both fruit. She’s a little tart rolling over the tongue, creamy; I crumble in the mouth, wet and rough.

She skips over to the bed, almost invisible with her cream skin on cream satin, hair the color of headlights at night. Do these sheets make me look fat? she asks. She’s serious. How do you know if you’re beautiful? Are you only beautiful if someone else thinks you are? And what does it cost? She almost only ever speaks in questions.

Last week, she was obsessed with cantaloupe and Eartha Kitt. As I got ready for work, she jumped up and down on the bed, singing, I Wanna Be Evil. When I came home, she’d tried to dye her hair black. The dye was spattered on the walls, the couch, the floor, sticking to everything but her hair, which shone like a canary in a coal mine. It didn’t work right, huh, she asks. Do you hate it? Her face crumples. I hate it, she says. I rubbed toothpaste on her hair until it was back to blonde, and we ate cantaloupe in bed, gently scooping the calm flesh into our mouths.

Stop writing. Come talk to me, she says.

Okay.

It’s hard being dead, she says. I never look any older. I want to know what I really look like.

I can’t fix it for you, I tell her. I think that this is love but it feels just like helplessness, I say.

What is the opposite of helplessness? she asks. What is the cost of death? She takes the phone off the hook. A recording plays: If you’d like to make a call, please — she wants to know, if you leave a phone off the hook, how long does the busy signal play for before the line goes dead? She drops the phone receiver on the bed. Is there a time limit to how long you can be happy for? The phone blares its staccato call through the twilight. This is always the last thing I ever hear, she says, as we taste the fruit and meat of each other’s mouths, as I dissolve into her kiss.

Something Somebody Said Once.

"I love you, and a part of me always will."

Who knows if you meant it then, if you mean it now, if you'll ever mean it - but I choose to hope that you might have meant it, and that maybe you still do. Because the feeling it gives me is warmer than any blanket. It's what this blog was created for. It was a little piece of warmth that wraps around me in a way this world can't get close to otherwise. Things like that, things like what you said - they're the needle that turn poems into blankets, and my life into something less ordinary and closer to miracles.

She's All I Can Read. Jeannette, I LOVE YOU.

"Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour."

Jeanette. Oh, Jeanette.

"What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you."

Just Something

Have you ever thought you were a terrible person?

I sighed. Often, I say, but it makes no difference. Try though I may, I'm always the same. Crooked, backwards, and bent.

Lately, I think it. I believe it. I want to be different. Better.

Then you're already better than most people, I think. The rest of us just don't want to get caught. And that is the god blessed and god awful truth of things.

Well, that seems miserable.

Can't say I ever lied to you.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

This Thing That Was In My Head.

"So say there was another world, then. Would we be together?"

She paused, smiling, and set down the cup.

"I don't think so, darling."

"But, you love me. And I love you. If there was no him, or no her, wouldn't that make things seem right? What else do you need?"

"You love a lot of people, Jane. I love you the way one loves things that are strictly dreams. Things that can't be believed in. I love you how I love Santa Clause for his spirit, or how I wish I could love Jesus. You ask if we would be together. You're not asking if I'd fuck you or we'd share a room. What you're asking is if I'd believe in you. As more than a beautiful gesture or an idea. And at this point, I know you too well. I can't put that sort of faith in you - I see you for who you are. Permanence is not your virtue. I can't pretend we'd be together. I know you too well to love you that way. You don't even enjoy your own company for more than a few moments at a time. What good would a lifetime of me do?"

"It could be different," I managed, "and human nature is not so predictable. Things could be different this time."

"And no two snowflakes are alike, but they'll all fall together, end in an inanimate heap together, and eventually melt into disappearance together. Originality gains me no points. Nor would niavete."

"I could change," I countered, "and things could be as they've never been before. I could fix all the broken things. I could make you different."

"And the world could end next week. I could die tomorrow. The sky could turn purple. We could get fired from our jobs. Could, could, could - a future built out of the hollow bones of little birds. You could do anything. But it's like that lovely poem by Stevens - 'the surviving form of shall or ought to be in is ' - a little piece of hopefulness will always permeate our tomorrows. At the very least, a memory of that hopefulness. And yet, it's just a small piece if it's anything at all. You're already an amalgamated sum of all your defeated 'could be's.' I can't pretend there's no difference between the insistency of 'could be' and the firmness of 'will be' or the truth of 'is.' "

"So what you're saying is, I can't change? You'd not give me that chance?"

"What I'm saying is, you'll never stop changing. And I wouldn't bank on it, no. I need you too much to let you defeat yourself for my sake. I know you too well to love you like that. We would both die. Alone. Together. Alone."