Ode to Wellbutrin
Heat pours into this bowl
of valley, and no one points a finger.
It makes dried fruit of the living room,
jerky of meat, empties the dog’s
water bowl. Not a scorching,
but a burning off of early morning
fog. This is hard to explain.
What is love if not something
you can count on, something
that has always been there?
White pills and brown pills
that siphon light for the kiss
of white noise. A hymnal of radio
static. A storm softly breaking.
This is almost a feeling.
When I am with you, time
splays out like a flat gray circle.
Something like a headache
that never takes form.
My sweet, my succubus,
if we were to point a finger,
where would we point?
God with a Small Face
I imagine God is like me, when it’s too cold to move
from the boy’s bed to the bathroom, and I get to thinking
about how many people that really love me, know me.
I imagine God prefers anyone to Ginsberg. Has a best friend
out of town. Can’t find car keys, too wasted last night.
Averts the swarm of eyes on the first bus home. Understands
no one is looking, no noun is permanent, nothing is all there is.
My God likes film, hates dark theaters. Heightened awareness
promotes anxiety. The world at small feeling large. A desert
weighted on the shoulders of every passerby, and God, always
last to leave bed. I imagine God at the bus stop wearing shorts,
having underestimated the cold. She pulls her socks up
for warmth and feels embarrassed about who knows what.
Oh well, God says, Some days this, other days that.
Blesséd
after Sam Sax
Blesséd is the synonym & the man who said it first & blesséd is
the prose poem & the flagrant plagiarist. Blesséd is the vessel &
the buoyancy of blood & blesséd is the light that leaves the eye
an aqueduct. Blesséd is the meter maid & political correctness
& blesséd is the seventh day & those that it’s afflicted. Blesséd
are the mournings & blesséd is this ground & blesséd is
Trayvon Martin, forever seventeen. Blesséd is America/ land
that I love/ stand beside her/ & guide her /through the white-fanged
night/ godless & guilty & hungry for more.
Robin Estrin doesn't have much to say, and would rather not. She is a student of literature, creative writing, and politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has work forthcoming in Miramar Poetry Journal. She tweets occasionally @robzmobz.