I would love to undress you.
I suspect underneath
the zipper you are
no less than gold,
that you emit a fat
bold light. That in sleep
you curl up completely,
a red plastic fish.
Look at you flickering.
And it means you are stubborn.
It means you are constant.
It means your little dance.
If I spoke Russian, dearest,
I would say to you
From whom did you receive a letter?
Who was wearing a pretty dress?
What’s new? What does this word mean?
What are you writing?
What happened?
Nothing to live on.
I feel like sleeping.
You feel like sleeping.
We feel like going to the movies.—Heather Christle, The Difficult Farm
What you do is you have a what if
and then you go what is the consequence
so it is basically really easy
or also you can complain
like you can go this penis
doesn’t make sense here
and then they have to move it
somewhere else
like go stand in the hallway
and move your penis around
in a slow uneven circle
that you are imagining
in your fresh mind
like you are inside it
and I am like I like that part
because I am also inside it
and you are showing me around
and in one hand I am holding
a glass of Dr. Pepper
and the other one is pointing
at what makes you different
and special and it is a physical thing
which I am going to touch it
This is not a personal poem.
I don’t write about my life.
I don’t have a life.
I don’t have sex.
I have not experienced death.
Don’t take this personally but
I don’t have any feelings either.
The feelings I don’t have don’t run my life.
I have an imagination. I’m imagining it now.
This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
This poem stole that line from John Ashbery.
This poem wants you to like it,
please click “like.”
This poem was written during a recession.
I’m so politically conscious
the word “politics” is in my poem.
This is not a New York poem.
There’s not enough room for all the wars in this poem.
Gay marriage is now in this poem.
Have you liked this poem yet?
It was written in 2011 in New York and posted 11 minutes ago.
Would you sleep with the poet who wrote this poem?
Would you buy his book? Click here.
This poem loves language.
This poem has slept with other poems
written by poets who love language.
All poets love language.
Let’s talk about language while people die.
This poem cares a lot but wants you
to think that it doesn’t really care.
The speaker of this poem may have been
born in a former Communist country.
It may or may not matter.
I had an orgasm before writing this poem.
I have my sunglasses on while reading this poem.
Everyone is going to die
please don’t take it personally.
The world. The world.
The world is blood-hot and personal.
I stole that line from Sylvia Plath.
Put your money on this poem.
I love the money shot.
This is not a personal poem.
This poem is only about Alex Dimitrov.—Alex Dimitrov
“Only it wasn’t the mystery of language we needed revealed, it was mystery itself, before language, still draped in the mists. I saw the darkness swirling inside him. I saw that his feet did not touch the ground when he played basketball at recess. In moments, he was flying. Not like a bird but subtly, like a person.”
-Miranda July, “Making Love in 2013," No One Belongs Here More Than You
This week FLOOD BLOOM author Caroline Cabrera responds to our Writers’ Spaces Interview, sharing some of her old space and new space, her writing habits, life, poems, and cat.
Where do you live?
Currently I live in Fort Lauderdale, in an old Florida house made of Dade County Pine. I…
Give me your lampshade
and I will build a lamp for you
in case the power goes.
We can play clapping games
and spark
and spark.
–Caroline Cabrera, “Powder Keg," FLOOD BLOOM
I won’t say a thing & I won’t notice
god you are
the softest
kind of jerk
& yesterday is gone
& I had nothing to do with it
–Elaine Kahn, “A Voluptuous Dream During an Eclipse”
Let me be the architect
in the glass city of your mouth,
the wild clock of your mouth
that spins backward: glass to sand,
sand to freshwater pearl.
Let me be the beekeeper, feather
merchant, knife thrower, soothsayer,
the savant of your mouth.
The farrier with tested theories
…
When we say something is beautiful
we mean we can laterally bisect it.
The moon for instance has the day side and the night.
A manta ray has two black wings.
A girl’s face has one green eye, one nostril up-turned
like half a ski jump, 16 teeth,
and then again.
Elizabeth Taylor, the most symmetrical of us all.
A peach with two soft sides, two halves of a poisoned seed.
Even the five-pointed starfish fits into our group.
The best time to bisect a starfish is at night
after a shipwreck when they grip the shore.
They say they are the hands of sailors who didn’t make it.
There is no road out
of this room forever, no path
to uncross ours, no age
that isn’t tender. All week I’ve been growing
into my skin with you, trying to release
the shaft of my spine and break
into some new center, some new
yellow house in some new century, beyond the border
of my red paper heart
and love notes on the mirror.
What’s happening right now
is very beautiful.
I’m holding an armful of candy
and knocking on your door.
There are blue caterpillars
in an apricot tree
which will be the thread
that pulls me through today.
There is pain here
and a mango tree,
deflated balloons and broken
crayons like promises, parents
who tried so hard
and parents who didn’t.
I am trying so hard
to stop, for a moment, the tornado
tearing through you, to draw you
into angels,
to write you each an ode, to say
I love you in a way
you will believe and hold
like a feather against your skin, a small something
to fly home with.