Light from a match makes a candle feel more romantic.
Lost art: collecting ornamented boxes from high
end restaurants & hotels, plus cheap books
from gas stations. I had drawers full of them
for special occasions & just in case, but inevitably circa past
2am, someone (like me) would be so drunk
they’d light their cigarette on the gas
stove, burn off some hair. How tinged
that smell is in memory w/ joy & frivolity, youth & worries
that loomed like vultures, but from this middle
perch, I know they were shadow puppets at best.
The boxes I’d saved for prized moments that never
arrived—they all disappeared, got lost in one move or another,
which means I probably tossed them in a fit
of self-recrimination about how much stuff I let
accumulate, while neglecting to note that each tiny
carton held an intimate memory of its collection. I’ve got so much wreckage
behind me—lovers, spats, splits, violence (domestic),
divorce. Cops at the door, my tear-stained head
shaking w/ I didn’t call them. Teetering toward
poverty w/ a little kid whose legs hurt from chemo, the two of us
in a three-story walk-up. Memory crunches like burnt hair,
useless, clinging, sticky. My mind’s a junk drawer.
What can I salvage now? I sit in the solitude I worked
so hard to create & wonder if I’ve got one great love left in me.
Is this, finally, what it means to be human—to fail
so deeply you spend years in terror & therapy working
thru what he did to you only to crave that same tight ring
around you again? Connect, connect, pushes some voice, but
every dynamic, I end up feeling trapped in an airless
attic, like I’ve got to protect my spirit from being snuffed.
I don’t do well w/ monogamy, I tell my therapist in a voice
so confident, I ignore that I’m putting the onus on me, once again,
& not the tawdry system. Every love affair, I pound like a mime
against imaginary walls, then wrench free to declare
autonomy, & after this many times down the path, I know:
the problem is me. It would be wrong to knowingly entangle
again, wouldn’t I be engaging in trickery, creating
the kind of enclosure I fear, while secretly
palming a skeleton key? All I seem to do is lay
elaborate traps, & prove I can escape. Still. How many days & years
are we supposed to promise? Why isn’t I love you right
now cradled like a precious creature? I had a short-lived
romance w/ a writer from the heartland, how different
she was from east coast me. We were marooned in the desert
of New Mexico, throwing ourselves upon the judgment
of a motley grad department. I read recently her novel
got published—the one she was working on 20 years ago.
It’s full of her usual tropes, & w/ my particularized lens I can note
which grew brilliant & which got tired, but I can
re-direct the same bright light & illuminate my flaws
& gaps, too. Eventually everyone bores me;
my inner world’s so rich. It’s a brightly-wrapped gift, this realm
inside; it’s a burden, I suppose. And yet.
A hungry flame endures, tickles at the veins
of my tied-up heart & begs for one more
great love—it’ll be the last I ask for. Feed me the death I most crave.
Let the flicker of me be extinguished in their gaze.
Bring me a lover who’ll light my cigarette w/ a match.
I’ll inhale smoke laced w/ sulfur & sink into the magic—
Strike. This time will be different.
Guest Editor Shibazrule, aka Lisa D. Chavez, is a poet based in New Mexico. Her poetry books include Destruction Bay (West End Press) and In An Angry Season. (University of Arizona Press). She also writes memoir and fiction, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Mexico. She’s delighted to have the opportunity to be Guest Editor here at The Coop for the month of August.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 