 |
|
|
|
Broken Rib |
|
by Aaron Fagan
|
|
1:01 |
|
 |
|
|
|
I don't want to have my picture taken
Reading porn on a toilet, masturbating
For America at a dump in a HAZMAT suit,
But before the day is done it may come
Down to people walking straight up
To me in order to say, "I don't know
What's wrong with you, but it shows."
And I will want to curl up into a ball,
Until I become nothingness, and say,
"I'm not much, but I'm all I think about."
But I did manage to write down, after
Malaika got out of the shower, the date
And time she said, "Every time I put
On deodorant it just makes me laugh."
And the time Tracy called after she got
Drunk and fucked a stranger: "I didn't not
Want to come home and be with you."
Today, I admitted it all over the phone
To Sarah, in Chicago, who has got God
Tattooed in Sanskrit just below her left
Breast, when it was about time I told her,
"I no longer comprehend the meaning
Of joy, but I can still sense a tenderness
Forming in the shadows of your oranges."
Twice she quoted her favorite line of the Gita
"I am Time grown old to destroy the world."
I said a girl from Toronto emailed earlier
To tell me her "legs are famous in Japan."
Aaron Fagan is the author of Garage (Salt Publishing, 2007); his debut collection of poems. He is a copy and research editor at Scientific American and lives in the Bronx. You can visit his Web site at aaronfagan.com.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|