CJ STRAUSS

The Poem Writes Itself

I'd like to suffer into a tribute to myself
teeth beset by teeth
the silk skin undercover
too dumb to be undone.

Every night I thrust my window toward heaven
to accommodate the frame
of a picture that tells me how my life will end.

Every night I stamp my feet against the cinder
seven stories sinister over Manhattan
and let the world turn against me.

Someday a week from today
will be a week from today
and just that.

Someday I'll take a piss
and it won't be brave.

I spit and let
the wind carry me away.

The Poem Wants

To describe all the knots, in all the trees,
all the trees in all the forests, in all the world,
with painstaking attention, with meticulous refrain,
to every piercing orifice, to every swirling chasm.

To hold each possibility in its mouth,
guide them wet and anxious through the charnel of said and done,
and chew, and chew, and chew
and spit them right back out at you.

To catch every cloud, every cloud
that cools every city, every city that beckons you away,
and squeeze those clouds into juice, juice to drink
with you at breakfast, the breakfast that gives you reason to stay.

The Other Borough

Fog swallows the greenhouse uptown
(Sog follows the drowned ground)
Lover's furlough, the other borough
All the way down, down, down.

Remember the night
We cried together, for different reasons
You in the bedroom, myself on the train
And it rained because it always rains.

Remember December
In the grocery store
Overwhelmed with indecision
Sweetening nothings into slurs.

Remember forever
The 1-2-3 from mine to yours
Or maybe whatever
It doesn't matter anymore.

CJ Strauss (he/they) is a poet.