my love is a candle-flame,
not a bonfire. it
won’t blaze up and burn us
both to ashes,
but slowly, steadily go
down its little wick
to keep us company
in the dark
until the wax is gone.
then hopefully
I’ll keep it safe
in a new candle
we’ve built
to receive it.
respect, and how to learn it
last night at dinner I was rude
to you. and then later, at home,
you were rude to me.
turnabout is fair play,
I guess.
you said you respect me,
but your eyes and your behavior
belied it. I thought I
respected you, but
my actions, too, told
a different story.
the pillow book of Elizabeth the First
I.
the plants do not
abandon the earth
with the absence
of the sun. they
merely wait patiently
for the next season
to flourish again.
II.
as the second child
of a capricious father,
I learned from my mother’s fate
not to depend on the
kindness of kings.
a/part
I’m not chain smoking, but
I could be. I wonder what
will become of me, of us.
can your abundant love
fill the void in my soul
that I usually stuff
with m&m’s and rum
and weed and shrooms
and whatever feelings
I can get my hands on?
origin story
not that you’ve asked, but
here’s why I’ve been writing
all these Japanese-
influenced poems:
my gossamer bridge of dreams
I.
the scab on my arm that
won’t heal. my ability
to leave well enough
alone.
II.
“you have interesting hands,”
you said. “if by ‘interesting’, you mean
‘ugly’, then sure,” I replied.
that was our first date
only in retrospect.
more poems after the Heian ladies
I.
weeds wave gaily
on the 14th St exit
from the FDR Drive.
my heart has abandoned
all those feelings that
no longer serve me.
II.
that deeply
annoying hum
in the background;
the moth that flutters
and suddenly dive bombs;
the stench of hot
garbage on steaming
concrete streets;
a persistent panhandler;
oh, you’re still here?
six poems after Sarashina
I.
the hare knows better
than to fall in love
with the fox. why
don’t I have
the same instinct
for self-preservation?
II.
gray clouds, swollen and
dull with rain,
hoard their water.
just so my eyes
withhold their
sullen tears.
entrained
riding the train but I’m
facing the wrong way
and it feels like I’m
being pulled back to the city
by my heart strings, I can
feel the spool inside my chest
winding and winding.
sometimes when I
feel like crying there’s a
silvery sort of nerve pain
that runs along my very
veins and a prickling heat
behind my eyeballs and
I don’t even know why
crying wants to happen now
because there’s no excuse
for it and as usual I’m
in public and idiots are everywhere
existing in my presence and
I know by the time I get home
it will have passed and I’ll
be dry as a bone, my strings
rewound and all tucked away
and no relief will be had because
the need will have withdrawn
inside me like a snail
pulling back its antennae.
tomorrow is another day
to want to cry and not be able to,
or to not want to cry and barely
be able to hold it back.
the compliment catch-22
one night you tell me that I
look especially beautiful.
I find it hard
to accept this gracefully
because a tiny, stupid
part of me is already
thinking about all the nights
to come in which
you do not say that and
how that part will think
that I must look bad
– or at least, not
as beautiful, which
to that part is the same thing –
or that you’ve fallen
out of love with me, and
even though the rest
of me understands logic
and how I can’t be
equally beautiful
every night and how just
because you don’t compliment
me every night it doesn’t mean
you no longer love me, still
that part begrudges
current Brookes her compliment
on behalf of all the future
bitter slighted Brookeses.
this is why she feels like
compliments are a trap:
better to avoid the whole
thing and disbelieve
than accept it now, only
to regret it later.
R. Brookes McKenzie 