Emily Kendal Frey

2,878 Readings

My feelings for you have yellowed

Turkey sandwich, ham sandwich

One man stood for a while in the aisle

No less than three times

His flatulence forced rows of people to cover their noses

With sweatshirts

I tried to make eye contact

The plane had already

Abandoned me

Oh, spewing lawns of Los Angeles

Chip wrappers 

Water pumping in from my northern mountains

My friends say they are no happier than I am

The trick to sleeping deep is amongst us

I am among you, finally, as I sleep, unmolested

By dreams

My love for you is in a tin can in my ankle

You approach me like an open newspaper

Everything will be available

But I have to read it, first.

On the cooking show he produced

Beautiful spot prawns

I could literally feel myself

Aging as my chin hung forward

And the poems I was not

Writing flew from my soulscape

Yet I had never been

More content as we looked

Further for terms—

Ah yes, quenelle—

While back where we come from

People are untying our soft

Burdens and some kind

Eyes look slightly away

While others singe red

At the naked fact

Of dead love.

On the bus

From New York to Boston

A woman threw up

Pink pork something

And I stared at her

Like I was the President

Of THAT WHICH SHALL

BE SEEN AND REPORTED

TO THE UNIVERSE

She flopped on the scratchy

Black seat and my phone

Had a dead battery.

I am molting my habits,

But at glacial pace.

Anthem to the wooden

Farm and the wooden animals

Of preschool and to middle

School and high school

And trumpet toots to my comrades

Who I passed in the quadrangle

Of my college campus—

I never knew you—

And to the cities where I grew

Into a human,

Thank you. In the basement

Is a bicycle

I won’t ride.

The men I loved

And the women I loved

Seem like faint purple

Flowers in a universe

That is flowers,

Not stars.

Posted 04/11/13

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