Relationships, death, and the memory of youth make up these four poems by our August feature, Nicole Zdeb.
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~~~
Annette
I remember the way the light came in your room like a rented body through the window and us in your twin bed, our young breasts pressing into each other, barely sucked, we kissed each other’s tits chastely, holding them in our palms afraid that we would somehow break them, afraid that we were unworthy of their nectar, the glassy shatter of the Cure cocooning us, elsewhere in the house your parents smoked joints and fucked in the hot tub and drank Cuba libras before, during, and after dinner while the parrot you named Robert Smith squawked at the mailperson, cars, dogs, birds, clouds. He’s a nervous communicator, your mother explained. Aren’t we all? You put your arm under my head and I licked your sour pits and you told me that we’d love each other forever and it’s been true, though you’ve been gone for most of it, ripped your veins open with a blender blade and left. Your mother didn’t want me at the funeral, but I went to the funeral. I got so goddamn high I couldn’t remember the location of the church, the same church where we rehearsed MacBeth in the basement that glorious November. But I got there. You wore purple ribbons around your wrists. They had cut your hair. Why? Why did they cut your hair?
I don’t know what made me think of you today, Annette, except that you are always there, the background behind every scene, every kiss, every day, and every time I hear the Cure. I’m in a city you never saw, living a life with an Annette-shaped hole that lets in small crimson-throated birds looking for a perch. In that hole, I planted a tree whose leaves look like hearts and whose flowers are so pink they look otherworldly, flowers from a perfect and alien planet. They’re called camilla.
~~~
Green Jerseys Swarm over Girls in the Grass
Bloody, busy, we panted after Victorian
porn, fucking off on pillow books, Teen Beat
and Bop!, flouting god and Amerika
and the barbarously sad plaid exactly
to our knees, and each morning mass, pink ibis
light soaked the sacristy, how Father Richard’s
nail polish caught that light.
Into the trees, the state forest behind
the soccer fields where the paint-white
fades like remember that September,
the roses glorious in your neighbor’s garden.
Nobody noticed us, two people swallowed
by the domination of trees.
So we went, fizzing with listening for
that twig-crack, the quick declension into
flight, but fear forwent and fearing forgotten,
the afternoon grew arms around us
and the light changed without telling.
Then, the trees short-stopped and the sky dropped
gilding the matted necks of wild iris,
ourselves the brim of the field, an elusive
hymn unfolding, pretty and plain and pleasure
enough, skirting a house abandoned to clouds
and haunting the late afternoon,
now longing and drawing us closer,
now urging us to cross the field and come
inside, but we don’t.
~~~
Horsebarn Hill
The inconstant enemies,
our favorite trope.
Even during the days we walked
behind Horsebarn Hill, past
the pig with the amazing genitals,
with a flask of Old Crow and a joint
the lines between us were drawn,
if only in pencil, and we knew
that someday amok
in civil war, defending
ourselves against our better selves
we’d fight to the death.
At night, when I can’t sleep,
I remember those walks, that
pig, swollen and flaring, and
the skeleton of a deer
that I dragged back dragged
across the parking lot through
the dorms and dragged
into our living room, astonished
at the beauty of its spine.
~~~
I am a boat
in the hour before day begins
and swagger and creep
roads and ranges that night early left
follow the imprint of friendly animals
vagabond through stanzas
houses of air and particulars
centuries/minutes
a lake pre-Eden
black, serene, and teeming
today an autumn-mind
hyper-temporal
cherishing the living
brushing past death,
the slow dog, wild, toothy
circling human fires
I am a boat
across centuries and languages
distance collapses
grand, almost holy darkness
friction of wind
and against the horizon
now nearly given to day
brief flickerings: the dead are going home
~~~
Nicole Zdeb is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. She holds a MFA from Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Bedouin Press published her chapbook, The Friction of Distance. Recently, she’s had poems, photographs, and short stories accepted by Driftwood Press, Lana Turner, SWWIM, and other journals.
Spittoon Monthly publishes one exceptional short story or set of poems at the beginning of every month.