In this poem the boy
is just a boy. The hands are just hands. The blood is just blood. Let the body keep its red meditation, the cells sky at the center of the self, pulsing, breathing, wanting. If only it was that easy to write a poem without bleeding into it. Open the unmouth and let the unlungs bear the unbearable. Listen to the heart thumping out the unimaginable question of how to live a life unsolved, dissolved, absolved.
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Every morning the sun sets.
I wake and kiss the aching ground goodbye. I know, and everything is changing. None of this will last. Have you ever noticed how on long drives, the moon never moves? Here, in the same room in the same house in the same town–– long ago, you must have been a child. Now each memory is shot through with golden light, each conversation begins with you tucking a farewell under your tongue. The thing about beauty is its impermanence. The thing about life is that it ends. Everyone wants to leave something behind, so we looked at the stars and called them holy, we drew red ochre handprints on cave walls reaching towards the future in a throbbing symphony of breath singing we are here; we exist; we live and love over and over and over again until. this is a poem without an ending.
this is the cycle of dusk to dark, the child’s palms holding shame, the ugliness in your closet that refuses to die. this is a breath, which is a bomb, which is warm, ruined, that kind of feeling. these trembling hands, these bruised lungs, this unspeakable body. i was never any good at being holy. Here is the dream where we are both standing in the end.
Here is the dream where I tell you to hold me and you do, where you say you love me and nothing falls apart. Here is the dream where I leave the door open, the lights on, the table set. Look, I made pasta for you, fresh basil and everything, just the way you like it. Look, if we’re both standing in the kitchen, you might as well burn the whole place down. You’re going to break me, I know, but do it gently. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
Nathan L. There are two wolves inside you. One of them is made up and the other is a mirror. One of them is dead and the other is grieving. Neither of them are liars. Neither will let you cross the bridge. Guess which one is which? There are two wolves inside you-- What’s your name? The wolves demand to know. You demand to know, too. So you choke to death and the wolves choke with you. There are two wolves inside you or you are inside two wolves and all of you are fighting. Are you the wolves or are the wolves you? Nobody knows. Can it be both? This is a poem, everyone’s always confused. Just leave it alone. Just leave it! The wolves say: you can only ever know where you’ve been or where you’re going. Make the choice. dear body
by nathan l. i. dear body: here are your hands & here is your throat & here is the skin you live in & here are all the ways you’ll come undone. ii. dear body: I’m sorry. iii. dear body: your heart is the size of a fist which is to say the smallest things are keeping us alive which is to say do you remember a spring evening and a sunset? do you remember a woman playing fetch with her dog? do you remember? iv. dear body: what a miracle it is! to make yourself anew every second of every day. what a miracle it is to say the world is a place I see myself living in and mean it. Transcript:
A Poem for Testosterone by nathan l. Let me start over. Sculpt myself from a vial, boy bursting with becoming. Change is a slow slide from dark to dawn. In this poem, I’ll never be impossible. Say a prayer to my body: Forgive me. Let me start over. transcript:
epiphany by nathan l. How does it feel to be known? Say thunder. Say pine. Say streetlamp. Say my name. Say it again & again & again. Boy before a boy. Boy before a mirror. Boy before the tides spit you out, didn’t your father ever tell you not to turn your back on the ocean? Who were you before you coaxed yourself from starlight & seafoam? You, footprints in the shifting sand. You, sea glass tangled smooth. Somewhere, it is raining. A boy cradles his name to his chest, reborn. on her
by nathan l. she is my silhouette: a piercing almost i drowned in whitewater. it didn’t work-- we came back river-clean and yearning for something greater than us. this shadow-boy and ghost-girl trying to fill up the aching space between wanting and becoming. august
by nathan l. stretches around us like a sunday afternoon honey-slow, firefly-golden there is basil growing on your kitchen windowsill peach juice staining your lips your hair corn-silk soft oh, i want your blue hour your 6 o’clock sunrise your star-strewn sky just you, you, you. |
AuthorNathan Lee's poetry and prose. More of my work can be found on my Instagram. Archives
March 2020
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