I TRIED TO TELL YOU by G R Millard

there was a feeling but i lost it

driving over clark street under the bridge

when you said yr favorite smell was nuclear reactors

i forgot i was accelerating

Empathy stems from wallflowers the root bitters and tombstone jitters from keeping very quiet from shock and sawed in half All that was left was to observe diagram the eye ways militarization of dandelion spit Your family has a history of mystics No doubt why you are drawn to me The soot of it The earth of it Cave painting mind Aura sifting through out the day a garden full of hey youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s used to cull a feeling from yr throat

I MISS SOMETHING THAT WASN’T THERE

I want to be small and steady on my feet Rearrange my bones til my hips are spelling your name I said I wouldn’t write poems like this anymore But the black eye is too filling Sweet coke and throat hurt mantra you feel like no one could ever touch you again Good grief given bad timing The light bulb bursts and you have to kiss in the millisecond Between no and maybe Between warm and cold Nothing exists between hands and feet Except theorems and sweat I’ve met my ghost and she said Weep into every mirror Drool onto every feeling Like you weren’t hungry for ten months While flushed cheeks at midnight are more Home Than any kind of candle lit smile

GLAD

kitchen whispers that laugh in to a hoo-rah! voice over i feel like a family dinner inside a pill Watching you sleeve records under a blanket laughing stitches whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s whom making brownies from scratch The earth buzzing I feel the earth is still Spotlights dip into each of our separate scenes central air narrates a quiet connection All the arches are a little taller Supported by sudden brain surges The memory of people lost From the smell of cupboard and cocoa Thrift store and 7up

YOU LEARN THE WORD ‘UNREQUITED’ WHEN YR 9 YEARS OLD AND THINK ABOUT IT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE

FORUM AND FUNCTION

everybody knows this is nowhere a smulder shifting from a riff boys and girls: not always symptomatic of a broader memory not always one or the other do something (else) to it organic notebooks filled happy and gay Men’s Talk has been widely called into question

Our touch is Sitting on the couch All cannibal The papers fly When I read you Why and how I read you pacing I read you pushing Your face into the ferns

I’m inside the bird nest rest Of feet on lap where is the superfluous Nap only when you’re and the not so new? everybody knows a factory Awake and i know every body knows a domestic ritual I’m not alone when they finally break Enough to die

LIVING ROOM

LOST WISDOM BLUES

We are cryin outside Old Main we are pain framing whispered death march serenade you touch me i jump/you blush eyes slump baby trust is the window to the whole i told ya breathless/ told ya screamin hold you no less/told ya seeming / smallest so you wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hear leave n grieve /a new handshake leaving singin lost wisdom wakes weaving the longest song i ever seen fill a lung

i keep water ing the succulent you left on my shelf the leaves fall off when it misses the sun

I TAKE MY COFFEE THE SAME WAY I TAKE MY TIME

THE PART OF YR THROAT MADE FOR YELLING IS A GRAVE

HURTS! HURTS! HURTS!

I was so young once I stared into the torture i live in a pretty loveless corpse weidling utter authority over vulnerability being jimmied We suffer a mental state at the breakfast table blankly aware of the apartment showing signs of people despite accusations of finesse my montage teeth lie at twenty-four frames a second wattled flesh, rheumy eyes youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a monster sometimes but very kind a quietly escalating panic immures me in yr touch make me ugly with your clinical aura a horror-film foray into humanism sealed into the affliction for days tender fortitude charts the deterioration of a body an unsentimental distance keeps me from the erratic gait of yr mind

fill the house up w stomach acid and i will bring your breakfast upstairs. good morning, did you ask me what i was saying through the wall again? there is the creaking and the whispers--a whole new dialect when we walk the floors. there is a screech then there is your morning grapefruit eyes scooped out onto the counter. always watching me like that time in the DIA. the juice will inhibit the connector receptors and i will make up more diagnoses just to fill the kitchen with pomegranates. one day you will stop screaming when you see the knife and the red and the seeds.

BROILED LUNGS

every word is a new denture. sopping wet phrases try to fall out yr mouth, a few more syllables til they call the doctor again. she’s a witch and makes you swill lil daffodils. good for the sinuses, she says, good for the ones who can’t tell a lie. at half past, they ask to retract the statement, put away the canines, its only dinner. you can’t spill the beans if you are too busy puking other bodily secrets. what will you use to get out of this one? wisdom doesn’t work if the roots are still bloody. split a sentence with an axe and begin with broken english. I want it. I don’t know. I can’t say. the window births a new day when you switch out the truth. all gauzed and glowing with a new stack of smiles.

ONLY HALF

I am sitting on the library steps blushing I look like this now always blushing swaying control It’s a forever thing it’s siempre forever It’s a big breath when I’ve been held I think I saw the people who stole ur Volvo They waved espera espera They even have yr Marvin Gaye tape

I know you would approve They spit so freely they probably kiss like an ashtray Clear and solid We exchange glittery smiles oh pobrecito as I ask for a slap in the face And he says no more left they sit w me anyway

YO NO SOY UNA NIÑA

Two boys ask me for a lighter bruja luz One of them has held a door for me before Not even casually i remember He bowed and danced a passage he Held me

A GIRL CALLED ME CATALPA AND I SCREAMED

I DO NOT PRESUME TO KNOW YOUR FUTURE BUT SOMETHING TELLS ME YOURE FUCKED EITHER WAY CALL ME WHEN YOU GET OFF WORK IM BUYING FLOWERS WITH WORDS LEFT ON THE SCRABBLE BOARD I CANT WAIT TO LOVE YOU MORE THAN YOU LOVE ME THE TREES ARE WHISTLING AND WARPED I KEEP SEEING YOU THROUGH THE BRANCHES LITTLE STREAMS OF LIGHT LIKE ROPES LIKE STRINGS TIED IN BOWS KNOTS IN MY BUTTERFLIES ACHES IN MY ARMS YOU WILL MAKE ME BREAKFAST AND SOMETIMES WE WILL TAKE OUR COFFEE THE SAME WAY ITS PAINFUL IM GOING TO KISS YOU ON THE STEPS IM GOING TO KISS YOU PRETENDING IM LOOKING AT THE MOON THIS IS NOT THE FIRE IT IS THE KINDLING IM KINDLY YELLING YOU BIRDS AND JET STREAMS IM TOUCHING YOU IN MY MIND AND IT WILL ALWAYS BE AN OCEAN

27 weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been alright and every kinda light call me a column of attitude n a pillar of pillow talk call me bug and bit a little wit with your sleepy stare still beggin me to read you good night still---- your breath on the phone wires my jaw shut see your hands graze your cerebellum a squint in an ashtray still, you in yr black tights all spider thighs when you forget to cry for a year call me coconut water and leave me in the grass still image burnt into a retina little brain, lil fire no complaints my body so selfish in your light never tried, never sighed a smoke signal until it was just the two of us on the porch seeping songs into still night air

WHEN SOMETHING BURNS DOWN YOU WITHER OR YOU CLAMOR

31 rosemary rosemary rosemary when i ask if you will burn something has made me quiet again i wrote something rosemary about us you in the oregano again smiling thyme up over the roof so daring in our loose walk so much kiss in the kempt of talk turned, how fire makes the trees sleep sound inferno and the perpetual ailment of anger its blue when the skin gets prayed for stop using vibes as religion a last call for empathy its rosemary in springs first brain freeze carry in what you stole from the garden: a limp in the waltz, a stint on the sill, a locket of well-meaning, a soft look to the earth, to the leaved burnt dirt when will i till parsimony into a graveyard made of sweet intuition

TUPPERWARE

Hey Hi. The breath was yes when the and fell slow. sinking the yes hello is still maybe when the door closed no. smile a sharpie onto wet maybes and another thing, I was yes just yesterday. Heya it heard a full cup to be no then also for there is hello in the light of a hi hey hello. winking right another became more almost than a handle as no more hi no more low still speeds the was a yes yes yes spits out of a hello.

SLEEVES

Sitting sickless. a new mouth and countless ear. When falling and mouthing the last is swinging. Just do with the dance a new mouth goes at long last. When less, have a second cling--for there is sitting up pretty a new new that the thought had ended. Mouth on and slip lest the perfect oh of new morning eyes. Two stiff and too much to eat. Up up up a mouth that wipes the color from last last night. Two more and the sick still lingers silver. Less is not less in an open mouth but quiver in the sit up stare.

CASSETTE

When the click smirks a sound, be sure to wind a whine into a cloud of similar smoke.

GRACE MILLARD gracemillard.com graaaaaaace@gmail.com