Kiss me good-bye until the thunder stops clapping,
until the moon starts glowing, until we all crawl
back to the fireplace, where the logs are burning
and the kids are laughing. Take me to the underground,
to a place I’ve never heard about.
Make me forget how I’ve hurt you.
Ask me questions, even if I can’t give you
all the answers.
Please accept my excuses, even if they’re useless.
Drink coffee with me, beneath the terrace,
as the smokers vape, and the drinkers guzzle.
Tell me what you love about the sunshine
that peeks under the rainclouds.
And tell me to stop,
if I’m talking too much.
Because I can listen to you speak,
on this cassette tape, over and over.
Press play.

Thank you. For everything.

Cecilia touched the red splotch on my polo shirt, removed it with her finger, and wriggled her nose, as the overhead light brightened with a hazy blue. She licked her finger. I was just glad when she pulled out a chair, sat down, moved closer to me, as I poured myself a ***** cran. Cecilia clapped her hands once, and then clapped them again, as the ceiling slowly morphed into a blanket of green smoke. I guess it looked more like the planet, as the smoke turned into small pockets of water blue.

She closed her fingers over my wrist and choose to look at the floor. "What happened to the carpet?" Cecilia asked, her eyes raising. "What do you mean?" I asked, looking down at my feet that were drenched in honey and chocolate. The TV crackled to life and a picture of Joey Biden appeared and he was writing in a diary. He wore a tennis hoodie, sweatpants, and Birkenstocks.

“What do you think he’s writing?” Cecilia asked, as she munched on a pineapple.

Joey put his pencil down on the desk, then walked over to the window on the right-hand side, opened it, and took a green **** sitting on his nightstand, ripped it, letting out a plume of smoke.

I shrugged and took a large bite out of of the pineapple.

“Something funny? Something serious?” Cecilia asked again, not seeming to notice the green smoke filling up the living room.

“You want my honest opinion?” I asked. The walls trembled from the hammers beating against them. A baby grand piano was being played somewhere upstairs. Outside, stray dogs were barking up a rainstorm. I tossed the pineapple over my shoulder and pulled a candy bar sticking out of the couch cushions. I felt the years of decay and melted caramel apple coating my palm, as I hunched forward, and tossed the candy bar out the windows. The dogs howled gratefully and crooned an old jazz bebop tune.

Cecilia laughed, clicking her heels together. “No, lie to me like you do when I ask you, ‘does this dress make me look fat,” she said, as Joey reached up to his bookcase and inserted his diary in between a history text book and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. He sighed, closed his eyes, and began to talk in Portuguese.

“He’s writing something about ****. Probably because he just got high,” I said, as I put my hand over my mouth and yawned.

Joey stopped talking in Portuguese and then he got up, walked over the TV screen, touched a button. The screen went black.

Cecilia’s face was shrouded in green smoke, green as crinkled dollar bills. “Do you want to go to sleep?” she asked, stepping over the passed-out brown bear laying in a puddle of honey and chocolate.

“It’s our anniversary,” I said, moving my finger gently over a plush red box. I turned and looked at Cecilia who was grabbing my face and kissing it. The box fell into the honey and chocolate, sticking to the floor.

I bent down, picked up the box, and opened it. A paper airplane floated out and unfolded itself, landing neatly in Cecilia’s hands. She began to read it, “Dear President Obama. Thank you. For everything…”

I closed my eyes and listened to an old Louie Armstrong record playing on a turntable a foot away in the kitchen. The needle scratched. Then, the volume lowered down.

The curtains closed.

And the TV buzzed as the dogs burned each house in the neighborhood.

She got my number from her sister Elizabeth.
She spoke in a voice, bearing resemblance to the silkworms the Europeans stole.
She used to date a guy from Hixson who drove a 1956 Chevy Bel Air.

I drove a Toyota.
I didn’t smoke cigarettes, or drink alcohol.
I went to NOVA, the community college.

She texted me: Good Morning; She texted me: I’m thinking about you.
She told me, over the phone, about her car accident, before her family.
She found a new boyfriend: Mark. A mellow skater.

I took my first creative writing class with a Professor as my poet.
I wrote poems about her, long ones, and short ones. Showed them all to her.

I spoke with her over the phone; told her I loved her.

When she didn’t respond.
I hung up.

Jules why did we come here? We're walking across wet sand and hugging onto boulders, that are boomerang shaped. You hold an electric lantern and glow with light, as you walk along the shore. The stars shine brilliantly and I am sad because you don't look at me look the way you look at that lion-shaped rock.

I chew on gum and try to forget about the fact that you're puffing on a Marlboro light. My Uncle died of cancer two months ago, and this is why I now chew on dentine ice. You tell me to stop smacking my lips. I want to push you in your chest, grab your cigarette, and burn a hole in your cardigan. But I bought that cardigan for you last Christmas. It cost a whole paycheck.

I need a better job. But you got me that job. So at the same time, I'm grateful to work at a country club, sweeping the tennis courts with a broom, as I watch young people swing and miss with their racquets. The clouds begin to darken and cluster above the beach. My knee shakes violently and I know it's about to thunder and boom with hard rain.

I open my mouth and try to put my arm around you, pulling you in closer. But you start to climb a rock, crawling on its lopsided surface, and digging your heels into its cracks. You toss the Marlboro **** and brighten the intensity on the lantern. The light spreads across the rock and the beach, like glass shattering onto a tiled floor. You hold the bright lantern in front of your face.

I can no longer see your brown eyes, your black, curly hair, and your jagged nose. You look at me. But all I see is that bright and shining light covering and shrouding your silhouette. You turn right and stare affectionately at the lion shaped rock. I swallow my gum. I pick the cigarette pack from the sandy floor. I flick the lighter. My eyes close.

I miss you.

I watched you soar off a balcony,
Only to land on a giant net stitched
From your goals and dreams.
You traded your soul for an extra moment with the silhouette of her shadow.
Bury me in her old cardigan and
Her parking tickets. Take me back
To a time when these feelings
Didn't shatter my good sense.
I traced the outline of our brownstone
On your inner thigh.
You woke up to the bed covered
In roses and firewood.
The getaway car trembled as
You stepped inside, dragging
A red wagon weighed down by your discarded dreams.
Before I could pass out on the futon,
You asked me, do you love me?
As you drank from the merlot bottle.
I wanted to nod my head instead of
Shake it. But hey that's what the
Rewind button is for.
So the parachute refused to open,
And I died that night too with you.

Her dreams are packed suitcases,
sitting on the driveway,
a piece of cloth sticking out,
ready to be unfolded and opened,
and then carried around.
I miss her
like how Americans
will miss the Obama family.
Touching her lips with my fingertips
is like rubbing healing ointment
onto an open scab.
Mom says, “You will always regret it,
if you don’t send her a text back.”
I dump my phone into the fire,
watch the plastic and metal burn,
the embers and ash piling up.
A black hand reaches for my shoulder,
before I wake up in a cold sweat.
I open up her suitcases:
a blue Grand Canyon blanket,
a laminated receipt
from a Sushi Restaurant,
a deflated basketball,
her knockoff Gucci glasses,
a worn piece of my heart.
I touch my chest.
and I feel nothing there.

A drop of water races down the windshield of a 98’ Honda Civic.
Art feels queasy from drinking too much milk with his coffee.
There’s a battle in his inner eye and recovery cannot be seen
in the distant future.

Garden snakes wriggle between the blades of
grass while the lawnmower hums
like the orange glowing streetlamp
outside my apartment building.

The cold wind spreads a blanket of wrinkles
onto the pavement smeared with blood and
my pa’s tears.
He spent his entire life hiding in a turtle shell, his head
buried in his guts.

The highs and lows fluctuate within the soul
of a poet who stabs his pen through
notebook paper staining his
leather ledger with black ink.

Songbooks bungee jump off the scaffolding of
red brick tenements as the moonbeams trace concentric circles
round the puddles of
dead rainstorms on the pale concrete.

My pa picks up a bow and arrow,
plucks the string back,
and shoots the target painted
on the granny apple falling

from the heavy branch of the dogwood tree.