60 NEXT FETISH
always being first to text (giving), attention whore (everything to do with it), believing universe brought us together for special purpose (everything to do with it), confusing healthy, safe partners for boring (everything to do with it), consult Tarot cards for advice (everything to do with it), days of being ignored (receiving), dissecting text messages for subtext (giving), empty (everything to do with it), exchanging sexual pictures or videos w/ a stranger (everything to do with it), fantasize future w/ lover (giving), ignoring intuition about partner choice (giving), imagining perfect sexual scenarios w/ strangers (giving), insert sexual language or flirt as a wall (everything to do with it), loving people who can’t love back (giving), mistaking anxiety for love (everything to do with it), mistaking coldness, emotional unavailability or general disinterest for mysterious or deep unrequited need other can’t express (everything to do with it), playing role of perky, eccentric girl who has no deep intentions (giving), pretending not to care (giving), not caring (everything to do with it), rehash all details of minor interactions w/ friends for subliminal clues missed (everything to do with it), relishing in rejection (receiving), scared (everything to do with it), sex one time w/ a stranger (receiving), texts t/o day w/ strangers who want to meet for sex (giving), waiting for others to make contact (receiving), unable to quell compulsion to make contact to see how long until s/he responds (everything to do with it), unprotected sex (receiving), ways of a devil sleeping in a lion’s den (everything to do with it)
280 THEN FAIL ELSE LOAD BREAK
what happens over time
pure thought
we devote to our dead
poem an attention
to this object I chastely handle far from hands
now I am a continuity of hours
to think that others exist
is that a facet of love
slip veil
crouch seaward a coasting lapped
like an embrace/ recall
touch a real hell not an imaginary
mouth to mouth carrion/ trouble circles
a spinning cracked/ useless as a basket
of inner sorrows brought to a wolf’s
battered door/ eat me your smile largely
disintegrating/ look at me/ who do you think
I am to beat sadness down to a reined beast/ smell
me/ curdling pain beneath my tongue/ spit for me/
a cancer fed with giving/ pure brightness/river stones
sewn rockwise to fill this void where once
a language of sweet sighs emitted/ spew now
baseless/ pleasure belongs to a dream once
I had those/ in another world/ in another song
not sounds of this siren
Megan Burns is the publisher at Trembling Pillow Press (tremblingpillowpress.com). She also hosts the Blood Jet Poetry Reading Series in New Orleans and is the co-founder of the New Orleans Poetry Festival (nolapoetry.com). She has been most recently published in Jacket Magazine, Callaloo, New Laurel Review, Trickhouse, and the Big Bridge New Orleans Anthology. Her poetry and prose reviews have been published in Tarpaulin Sky, Gently Read Lit, Big Bridge, and Rain Taxi. She has three books Memorial + Sight Lines (2008), Sound and Basin (2013) and Commitment (2015) published by Lavender Ink. She has two recent chapbooks: Dollbaby (Horseless Press, 2013) and i always wanted to start over (Nous-Zot Press, 2014). Horse Less Press released her Twin Peaks chap, Sleepwalk With Me, in 2016. Her forthcoming fourth collection is titled BASIC PROGRAMMING.
