Nikki Allen : Three Prose Poems
letter to gina.
Honey if you had a Camaro the night would be perfect for sitting on the hood, bullshitting about what it means to be from this town, this place, this quadrant of land-earth-dirt. We could talk about how we are barely there blips on the big screen, how we are the entire screen, and the eyes upon it, and the minds behind it. All and everything. We could make decisions together—like argue or kiss. We can roll home listening to Concrete Blonde, the windows down, wrist to wrist crisscross of hand on thigh to thigh.
The minutes, sugar, we do not own them; I cannot give them to you. Clouds still move fast—you can’t halt the process. In the summer when the bar stinks like shitty bands and spilled beer—you were split between two honeys and they both loved you with chilled fingers, with bellies that knew. With heart, with heart. So much heart it shoved you out of the room and in the end had nothing to do with you. When you come home find a note leaning against the screen, a brief scrawl of “call me,” the handwriting unkept an upset, you could tell.
I write this bit with you in mind—the way the wind will lift only the ends of your hair, leave the rest to rest. I have in mind the stolen bottle of sake, the mad twin giggling in your car at the bus station. I had a world behind my tongue, devastated, drunk but your company had a way of halo with it. I adored you for the moment, the reassurance that lost is okay that lost is normal that lost is actually a place, found. Somewhere safe to be sweet. High fives on the one way street, the buildings piled up around it. The coffee shop shut down, the book store shut down, the diner a ghost. Where my previous thief smacked meter heads with baseball bat over some girl with a pageboy, the delicious cigarettes of summer double-zero. Finding twenty bucks on the ground between the outside tables, the traveling, the know-someone who knows-someone. The way you taught me Broadway, had angels around the bed. There is no smile like yours—none so wise and sly—the afternoon late fall on balcony, the screwdrivers on an empty stomach(the world still fat behind the teeth trapped, hemispheres bit in two).
Though happiness, not a bus route; our sentences, not the cinema(Oh wonderful sweet//rain clouds beneath feet so glad to know you).
2.
We are starting to sit on porches, sharing the air of dying day with neighbors we never talk to. Sliding around in our separate routines and reading material, our caddycorner porches. A traveling man plays the guitar, the breeze is kicking down the street. This year’s summertime.
Gina, over time I have solidified the weird little promise made with the self. If I am safe, then remember a time of not being safe—never forget how it felt to be so far away, so buried, so believing in what cannot be changed(of the heartless, or ingrained—both we know are mingled like brother muscle fibers). The past matters, if only by the way I touch my hand to something now—thorough, definite, as present as present can be. The past matters, if only by the way an unspoken tolerance has developed, strained against its grips. Now I know: I have a right to say what bothered me. I have a right to both attack and defend all that ever happened.
I guess there are a few threads sagging but still attached—me to the city behind me. The home of ultimate pivot—the place of late night lonelies, the place of whiskey stink. The place of abandoned kitchen ware and mythical vortex. When this became that—or better said: when that became what traveled to this; I left the place stunned, a hand back to the mouth. I wanted to save something so badly, and I had malnutritioned weaponry.
But oh beautiful survival. How rare in daylight you are noticed, how little we know about you. I understand why some people love the word hope; I understand that even a bent up shred of it can turn the world again. We are on this moment because of the ones previous, stacked haphazard to get here. Apart is just an abstract form of togetherness—eye for elbow, hand for knee.Nikki Allen: *Disintegration Loops I. Saucony Jazz. 513 to 412. Cumulus, hemicrania, birds at four a.m, mixed tapes, honeybear holders and handshakes.
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*She's nice, she reads.*