Puff Puff, Give. Puff Puff, Give
I
always
thought
Friday
was
a
very
romantic
comedy
about
Ice
Cube
and
Chris
Tucker
trying
to
have
a
threesome
with
a
joint.
Acting
It’s in the shoulders
and the lips. Anything
can shrug. Wrists
roll into suit pockets,
sly indicators of interest.
Pupils roll around
in all directions,
make everyone dizzy.
Including yourself.
Blink to tears. Blink
them back. And do it again
with a happy feeling.
Blink. No, wink. Pretend
you don’t even
have eyes. Attempt
contact. But
don’t. Look away
if someone looks at you.
If you’re alone
you can sigh. Stumble
in heels, stumble
in flats, stumble into arms,
retract your whole body.
Clamp down tongue,
hands, thoughts, nipples,
anything
that will give you away
as someone who really wants.
The Acting Was Fantastic
I pretended to like the movie
so we could make out.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
1
Did you remember the way love works? I told you once in a small elevator that the world closes in on you in the moments of memory. Sometimes I work on forgetting. I practise it every five minutes. I work through each memory of you, and forget that one, then move onto the next. Sometimes it all comes back, and I work on blacking it out, from the couch, to the bed, to the television, to the chicken sandwich you ate afterwards. Ashes have memories attached too, but you can’t see them. Jumping off a cliff doesn’t make them run away, it only lets it slip back until the memory jumps too, and holds onto you for dear life in the ocean that was never very good at swallowing you up. The ocean runs away from you too.
2
Sometimes I think about how thoughts of you stretch my skin. You have a terrible memory so you smile more than I do. I remember, one time in Hawaii, you tightened the blankets around my body so I couldn’t escape, or so that memory couldn’t escape, and you put a bible over my chest. I don’t believe in monsters, so I slipped away in the night.
3
You are the devil, I said. Blond hair and blue eyes. I gave you control. I gave up all control. Control is just a construct. I gave up my memories. I figured I could try again, start with new ones, so I handed them to you, but you were never very good at carrying things. I gave my memories names, and put them on your shoulders. I buried a few for later. I put some of them, the ones that sweeten from nostalgia, in Mason jars and leave them in the cupboard, then put a few of them on the counter because they look better for public display.
4
You said jump, and I did. The memory holding on for dear life.
You Fell for the Wrong Girl
Her face glossy
easy, breezy, beautiful.
That face glued on a billboard,
the best features
of another woman
glued to her skin. Eyes
that pop like Pygmalion’s
boner for shapely ivory.
Breasts as lovely and temperate
as barely legal Scarlett Johansson’s.
Her nooks are perfume-sample sweet.
Everything aligned. Legs
mannequin slick.
You see the world
through Kim Cattrall’s
thigh-gap, reach
for a sculpted navel.
Two teens can make a woman
Kelly Le Brock-bodacious
out of masturbation
perspiration, a Barbie doll,
and weird science.
Keep adding breasts,
a second or third vagina.
She is Her, a voice designed
to deliver smooth gratification.
But still, something is off.
Maybe she’s wrong, because
she doesn’t push herself
hard enough to be a real girl.
Or maybe it’s your fault
you don’t look like Ryan Gosling.
But Maybe He Wasn’t Really a Person
You watch too many romantic comedies so you stayed with the wrong guy
for the story. For the narrative. He fit the scenario you created,
and the stories you build wrap a theatre around your heart.
You couldn’t get out of bed the day he left, put beer in your coffee cup,
and told everyone you were moving to Bali.
You watch too many romantic comedies so you stayed with the wrong guy.
You created a narrative between text messages and between
things that were unspoken, that maybe were never real,
and the stories you build wrap a theatre around your heart.
You moved across the country to live with him
and when you showed up to his apartment unannounced he said “Oh.”
You watch too many romantic comedies so you stayed with the wrong guy.
You flirted with a guy via Twitter who said he was James Franco,
you sent him your number not realizing it was a robot,
and the stories you build wrap a theatre around your heart.
Before you go to bed, you imagine him leaving his wife, maybe at
a dinner party with all of his famous friends, falling asleep to your own dream.
You watch too many romantic comedies so you stayed with the wrong guy
and the stories you build wrap a theatre around your heart.
On Every Television Channel
On every television channel
there’s an opportunity for viewing
modern takes on Shakespeare, no period
costumes or iambic pentameter.
Who needs it when you can have Heath Ledger
and his greasy 90s curls, put-downs, come-ons,
crooning. He can’t take his eyes off of you.
The football field is so American,
so glowy your head feels like a pompom.
This is a movie about teens, for you,
even though it’s not how romance works out.
Or did you not know that when the time comes
your only choice will be to wait and wait
for grand gestures that don’t materialize?
This Is Considered Adorable
You lost it all in the recession,
wrote the sorrow in a diary,
called a young girl a cunt.
You fell for the wrong guy.
She bought you containers for your cereal.
Lucky Charms choke, said, “There’s someone else”
in the living room, naked.
You fell for the wrong girl.
He broke your car seat, he broke
your mirror, he broke your bed frame,
he broke wind, and this was considered adorable.
You fell for the wrong guy.
You placed your hope in a song,
let the world pass you by, paid
your dues in meatballs.
You fell for the wrong girl.
He left you when he was accepted
into law school, you tried to
win hearts, trading pink for black.
You fell for the wrong guy.
Titanic
What if Titanic was just a romantic comedy
starring Leonardo DiCaprio and
the Ocean?
The Stories You Build
The stories you build feel
real. Not just onscreen,
in you. Stories pile
in the rational parts of your brain.
Transformative, life-solving
love. Eyes stare into eyes
until misunderstandings break
your slobbering bodies apart.
Mistakes atoned for
in specific gifts, boom boxes
blaring, iconic buildings
illuminated, Tic Tacs.
You want overtures
that could get someone
put in jail: an airport-gate crash,
a jewel theft, some wholesome kidnapping.
He will come to you
without asking when
you need saving, when
he doesn’t even know where you are.
Nora Ephron
She wasn’t your best friend,
but she could’ve been.
The advice would have blown down
your door, rearranged your meagre apartment.
You would have felt better
about almost everything,
though sometimes not the endings
of stories. Those would leave you confused.
Like, why doesn’t anyone question
the love-of-your-life conceit?
Why can’t a story end
with solo wine, torn T-shirt, underpants?
That’s comfort. But so is she.
Writing desires, making things messy, then tidy.
She wasn’t your best friend,
She could’ve been anyone’s.
She was everyone’s.
Ever Wondered If You Might Be
the Best Friend
of a Romantic Lead?
(Additionally, you might be quirky.)
FIND OUT NOW!
Check all that might apply:
Zooey Deschanel might wear a kitten / panda / owl cardigan to play you.
You use words that make your sexually active friends cringe.
When you take off your pants and your underpants there is a second pair of underpants painted onto your body.
You tell everyone you are married to one-liners.
When you cry alone a ukulele soundtrack plays every single time.
You have never heard a saxophone sound sincerely sexy.
You shave your legs, but only because you can’t bear the scratchy feeling. It’s just so … adult.
You’re always available by phone for long discussions of other’s sex problems, heart problems, brain problems.
Your inner life is unknown to even your Instagram followers.
No one takes your advice seriously.
Every encounter is an opportunity for a joke.
You joke because you’re so used to that role.
You’re used to it because no one listened when you tried to be serious.
No one takes your advice seriously.
You’re not sure if your friends really like you.
You’re pretty sure you’ll never find love.
Every time you order a vibrator online you open the box and the contents have turned into sparkly dust.
Sonnets for Supporting Roles
Rita, Bridesmaids
One morning, you took a towel out of your
son’s drawer and its softness had turned
to stone. As you tried to press it into the
washing machine, it cracked in half. The way you
feel when the night comes and this isn’t
anything you expected. When she walks
down the aisle, you think about it all over
again, what falling in love is like: the warm
way bodies shake with new desire.
When she tells you that you are more
beautiful than Cinderella, you remember
the way it all began. The way he spent
his time fighting for your attention, the
way you let him, the way you gave in.
Dionne, Clueless
The way you let him, the way you gave in
still doesn’t make the neighbourhood
feel like home. When the picture is taken, you
are to the far left, or the far right,
not centre. You didn’t want to be called woman
knowing what that really means, knowing
the slang slides down your skin that
isn’t the colour of hers.
If you spend your days being a sidekick
if you help her get her driver’s licence
if you help her get a boyfriend, if you
focus on being the other for others
maybe you will be voted most popular and
that, maybe, it could happen to you.
Muriel, It Could Happen to You
That, maybe, it could happen to you,
another working-class woman can swoop in
take your husband who was always
more infatuated with your womb
than with your fire. Someone gives
you a way out, a golden ticket, a hand
never offered. They see you as “other”
and that makes them uncomfortable,
that you were forced into. “You so stupid,”
you cry out, as he slips away, to a world
where women are as white as the cream
they serve him with coffee. This world isn’t
for you, not for you, but for porcelain dolls.
George, My Best Friend’s Wedding
For you, not for you, but for porcelain dolls
walking down the aisle. You are a cellphone
or an emergency lip gloss. You are the touch-up
rouge in her purse, you are the gay best friend.
The one who fusses over her hair, memorizes wardrobe,
waits in your apartment for whenever she is ready.
Filing nails, and sitting on your Barcelona chair,
watching Murder, She Wrote until she calls.
When she is ready, you snap fingers and make
jokes with flapping hands, tell her she has it all.
When she needed you most, you flew down
to save a dance at the wedding, a wedding you
could never have, legally, so instead you collapsed
back into a lipstick and a clasp purse.
Kit, Pretty Woman
Back into a lipstick and a clasp purse,
where you keep your drugs, and your condoms.
She would sometimes get the higher-
class gentleman, but you’re not what
they are looking for, or so you say. You don’t
get to be Cinder-fucking-rella. Your glass slipper
has burn-marked edges from the crystal.
You offer a night to a grandpa and say
his wife can watch for extra, and it’s laughed
off, but you need the money, your life
depends on the kindness of strangers
or else your moth wings burn in neon red light.
When you watch her taken away in her carriage
it all sinks in a bit deeper, breaking the skin.
Christmas
for Daniel Zomparelli
Christmas is supposed to be
about love, or about the other.
About the way we’re supposed
to feel the pull of others to us,
and I guess us to them. We want
holiday-movie elation.
Liam Neeson is a sad miracle. Emma Thompson
is the part of you it hurts to see. Don’t
even get me started on Keira Knightley. Some characters
are always worshipped for no good reason.
What is the anatomy of a Christmas movie?
It’s a human shape that wears novelty sweaters
and drinks eggnog. You drink too much
and hope t
hat the cute guy notices
how loud and funny your jokes are,
even though you’re going to offend
his best friend in ten minutes
by being right about how offensive he is.
Sad faces look at mistletoe
and, below, incessant kissing;
slobbering fools, happy couples,
mismatched lovers. Even
when you know love
is really holes in underwear,
and shared silence. Small efforts
warm your heart the most,
death, sickness, forgetting how you used to be
as a kid on Christmas, a hopeful teen. Somehow
we all end up like Laura Linney,
unable to fulfill our own Christmas wish lists.
What we need to do is gather around a screen
with full bottles of wine,
and watch a fuck-load of celebrities
make merry, break hearts,
become barometers of holiday cheer.
Because it’s all about tradition.
You decorate with a remote control
and turn on the television.
Love Actually
Love, actually
moves between the spaces of desire and fulfillment, it isn’t
the spaces of longevity versus
boredom, between
sustainability and perpetual validation, in an ever decreasing
power, love, actually
cannot represent the general public,