Author Archives: Christina M.

McKeen Ass. 2 Proxy Poem

You, charging up that hill

 

Heedless immoderate thing, sturdy terracotta child

You fall often, but seldom cry

 

And often I tell you, Sometimes you gotta eat the pain.

Sometimes you gotta surf it

 

You run with your eyes your arms your heart

flung open

You run downhill too fast

You will be crushed

in a thousand different ways but

 

I remember I didn’t care either when

I was a sun-gilded Belleek earth baby

Greedy hungry thing

 

Falling is not the same as being pushed you tell me

the night of your grievous pain

and you shake with sorrow in your chest and

I shake with murder in mine

 

You tell me you will fling it all open again

You already know you’re not done running

You are not made of glass, or china or terracotta

He hasn’t killed you

Pinched out your flame with careless fingers

 

No one will see this part but you, is what you tell me

 

Helpless, I speak to your bowed head

Eat the pain.

Or surf it.

First

I nearly don’t remember you at all but

Here was the place

My first time, yours too

Things you lose: your patience your temper your heart your mind your car keys

Lose your way lose ground lose an advantage lose control

Did we lose our innocence? It’s a silly thought

We were tough smart kids before, tough smart kids after

Although maybe a little bit softer

I was softer, after

And anyway, technically nothing was lost that night

It was just an intimate physical clinical experiment gone slightly awry

All over my thigh, and

I nearly don’t remember you at all

Or that night either, except for the pin-wheeling stars

Straight-backed trees a stern wall of witnesses behind

Warm wet wooden planks under my shoulder blades

Cool slapping water, and murky water smells

Conscious that I smelled like the deep-fat fryer I slaved over every day that summer

But you?

I nearly don’t remember you at all

You were skinny and blond and you talked about rugby and bored me to death

You said you hated my town. I hated my town too

You tasted like beer and tobacco, which was exciting

I was pretty sure you were sophisticated

I thought you were cute, but I can’t remember your face as well as I can remember

the spirals of the stars,

the straightness of the trees

 

When you’re young you’ve got nothing to lose,

when you’re not, you’ve got everything to lose

Somewhere in the world right now, like me, you’re not young

Are you fat? Prosperous, happy, divorced, bereaved?

Burdened by stresses we couldn’t imagine

when we were young together on a night

so fat with the future it felt like Too Much?

Ready to live it all, have it all,

innocent before and after, in the way tough smart kids are innocent,

we didn’t know the risk, that everything we live and have can be lost.

I don’t think about that night often, or really ever,

And I nearly don’t remember you at all

but that being said, I’m thinking about it now

and although your form is dim

your name carelessly lost like car keys,

I would just like to say that I am thinking of you with enough tenderness

for the skinny boy you were

the man you may have become

and the losses you may have suffered along the way

that I can almost say, at long last

although I nearly don’t remember you at all,

I kind of love you

At Sandy Cove

Go there in the evening of a high summer day when the sky is clear and the moon is full. The light of it, and the stars, will be cold in the warm air. Be barefoot, as you will want to experience the boundary between the warm dry sand and cool wet pack through the soles of your feet. Lie on your back so that you can feel the loose sand shift beneath your weight, mold to your spine and fill the hollow of your lower back. Feel your heels sink into the earth. Don’t close your eyes. Open your mouth and breathe out. You are sending a piece of your warm self upwards into the cold starlight to become part of something ice cold and infinite.