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Daily Deviation
Daily Deviation
April 29, 2009
~anarchypress unpacks a smile like a baby pig's heart in Biology. I knew there was a reason to take that class!
Featured by fllnthblnk
Suggested by queenhrosie
Literature Text
Biology
They didn’t teach us anything important
in high school. I remember you,
negotiating with your back to the class
in those giant 80s glasses,
as the teacher took a break from his boy’s own stories
of pissing tigers
and Vietnamese cobras swaying in the tall grass
to expose himself: Being beautiful isn’t enough
to get you through life,
sweetheart.
Now at his age, I sit in front of my laptop
at an upscale bar and lay you open
over a California roll, chicken tortilla soup, and coffee
with cream: It seemed like life would be easy
for you. Has it been?
You reply that you were in your twenties
before you started to see who you were
from God’s perspective.
Is that how I had always seen you?
Even after twenty years, I could still unpack
your smile
like a baby pig’s heart
out of all that nasty mess.
They didn’t teach us anything important
in high school. I remember you,
negotiating with your back to the class
in those giant 80s glasses,
as the teacher took a break from his boy’s own stories
of pissing tigers
and Vietnamese cobras swaying in the tall grass
to expose himself: Being beautiful isn’t enough
to get you through life,
sweetheart.
Now at his age, I sit in front of my laptop
at an upscale bar and lay you open
over a California roll, chicken tortilla soup, and coffee
with cream: It seemed like life would be easy
for you. Has it been?
You reply that you were in your twenties
before you started to see who you were
from God’s perspective.
Is that how I had always seen you?
Even after twenty years, I could still unpack
your smile
like a baby pig’s heart
out of all that nasty mess.
Literature
an augury of tears
your love is the wind
on water. mine heaves deeper
than cruel riptide.
Literature
sempiternal
When I grow old
I want
a thousand
laugh-lines.
For when rainbows dilute and notebooks fatten
on times untimely passing,
when the moon falls out of kilter with a sun that
curdles in a sad, forgotten sky,
and the rain congeals inside the clouds
when the slurry of seconds sinks deep into my bones
and my skin crumples like parchment, my spine coils and splinters
and my fingers buckle, knuckle-cracking -
when my dreams fa
Literature
to map sunrises...
one day I will tell my daughter to touch herself
before she ever lets a man do it for her, to learn
her body-secrets and the shape of pleasure. I will
tell her that San Francisco always keeps your heart.
that her skin is a blank canvas, that hair grows,
the value of the right kind of disrespect. that the older
we get, the more we need the people who knew us
when we were young. I will tell my daughter
to give away the secrets that keep her up at night,
and that there is never a wrong time to love someone,
but sometimes a wrong way. I will teach my daughter
to travel without makeup; that sometimes forever means
morning and sometime
Suggested Collections
Copyright 2009 Michael O'Connell
© 2009 - 2024 anarchypress
Comments93
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this is beautiful.