by Neil Hilborn
Our Numbered Days
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Ambrose Bierce
O, call back yesterday, bid time return.
William Shakespeare
Time goes, you say? Ah no, alas, time stays, we go.
Henry Austin Dobson
Come on, skinny love, just last the year.
Justin Vernon
And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped.
Anne Sexton
...a time to gather stones.
King Solomon
Time is making fools of us again.
Albus Dumbledore
The clock talked loud.
Tillie Olsen
What has died: lightbulbs; all of my pets; my
family; the economy and thereby
my predilection for bad art and alcohol; the part
of me that allows me to love as though
I were not falling; me in the future; me
in alternate dimensions; everything
that is not at this moment fucking: everything
that will not be; my grandmother and
my aunt; the you in my head, the me
in my head and the you and me I have
made you and me in my head. There is
never enough time.
You Can Look
This is what it’s like to be in love
with two people at the same time. This is
what it’s like to get drunk in a mansion. You will never
live here; don’t get so comfortable. This is what
it’s like to live in a house full of antiques. This is
what it’s like to kiss someone until you are
no longer sorry you kissed them. These two people you
love, they are two temps doing the same job, separated only
by a cubicle wall. They are both trying
to fill a hole that wasn’t empty in the first place. You keep
calling yourself empty and you’re starting
to believe it. This is what it’s like to smash
your friend’s television. This is what it’s like to set
fire to the clothes you are wearing. This is what it’s like
to turn a suicide note into a paper airplane. This
is what it’s like to turn a life full of exclamation marks
into a blank page. This is the day you finally reach
the cookie jar and find it full of seeds.
This is what it’s like to buy the wrong kind
of flowers. This is what it’s like to read your lover’s
mail and find they are doing nothing wrong. Have you ever
set a field on fire and called it a birthday candle? Have you
ever punished a dog because you trained it wrong? This is
what it’s like to build a wall in your living room.
This is what it’s like to use bricks when you should have used
sand. The one you loved first, you only kiss her through a hole
in that wall. You describe the way your body would feel
against her hands as though you are an ancient city
she will visit one day. Every night you say it is
the last night. This is what it’s like to sell your shoes
in the desert. This is what it’s like to try to fall
asleep in a life raft. This is what it’s like
to say goodnight and mean goodbye.
This Machine Kills Fascists
The irony of the Woody Guthrie Center
in Tulsa, Oklahoma is that it’s financed
by oil barons. The Kaiser family helped build
things like the Hoover Dam. The Kaiser Family
are probably made of gold. There’s a “Woody Guthrie
Music Bar.” The bathrooms are immaculate
and modern. Nothing is covered in dust. Everyone
in all the videos speaks with no accent, except
for Steve Earle, whose first word was probably
“Y’all.” Woody was, you see,
not a great singer, painter, or even
guitarist, but Woody did not give a shit.
Woody drew cartoons despite having
no idea how to draw. To call Woody Guthrie
a hero is true despite the fact that
a hero is supposed to have muscles
and a destination in mind. If Woody
were alive today he would be a crust punk.
He would be both amazed and thankful
that people still ride the rails and that
there are still boxcars to ride in. He would have
a pitbull named Pete Seeger. Woody would
take one look at this museum and decide
he needs to sleep on the floor. He would
write some new songs on the walls. He would
discover spraypaint and spray on all
of his cans: This Machine Kills Fascists.
Dust Mop
This story requires some exposition, so here
goes: my friend, let’s call her Mary
because her name actually is Mary,
works for Teach For America. She teaches
at Todd County Middle School
on the Rosebud Reservation
in South Dakota, and she has asked us,
us being me and my girlfriend, name given
upon request, to teach a poetry workshop
for her kids. Great. With that out of the way,
I would like to now say this. I have been
reading Sherman Alexie’s poems for a few
years, and he talks a lot about how Indian
kids love basketball. I, being a good progressive
liberal socialist opponent of colonialism
wanted to assume nothing about Indian kids
and basketball, but then they asked me to play
some five on five, so I will say that
these nine Indian kids can ball. Humility
is getting shook on by a 4’11” boy who is
eleven years your junior. I tore my shirt
trying to block Damante, and that is the extent
of what I have lost to Native Americans.
Song for Paula Deen
You are the Four Seasons or the Elvis
of food. Black folks have been doing this
for years, but put a white face on
it and suddenly all the butter won’t
kill you. The butter, Paula. If no
butter send lard. If no lard
send fatback. Paula, I dream
of you, greased. I hold my hand
near your skin and find you are hot
enough. Did we do this to you or did you
want this to be done? I too have turned
food into sex and women into food, so come
on, Paula. Melt for me. Throw that hoecake
in the frier. Make me America
like I want you to want me to be.
OCD
The first time I saw her, everything
in my head went quiet. All the tics,
all the constantly refreshing images,
just disappeared. When you have
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,
you don’t really get quiet moments.
Even in bed I’m thinking
did I lock the door yes
did I wash my hands yes
did I lock the door yes
did I wash my hands yes.
But when I saw her, the only thing
I could think about was the hairpin curve
of her lips or the eyelash on her cheek
the eyelash on her cheek
the eyelash on her cheek.
I knew I had to talk to her.
I asked her out six times.
In thirty seconds. She said yes
after the
third one, but none of them
felt right so I had to keep going.
On our first date, I spent more time
organizing my meal by color
than I did eating or talking to her,
but she loved it. She loved
that I had to kiss her goodbye
sixteen times, or twenty-four times
if it was Wednesday. She loved that
it took me forever to walk home
because there are a lot of cracks
in our sidewalk.
When we moved in together,
she said that she felt safe,
like no one would ever rob us
because I definitely locked the door
18 times. I’d always watch her mouth
when she talked when she talked when
she talked when she talked. When she
said she loved me, her mouth would curl up
at the edges. At night, she’d lay in bed
and watch me turn all the lights off and on
and off and on and off and on and off
and on and off. She’d close her eyes
and imagine that days and nights
were passing in front of her.
Some mornings, I’d start kissing her
goodbye but she’d just leave because
I was making her late for work.
When I stopped at a crack in the sidewalk,
she just kept walking. When she said
she loved me, her mouth was a straight line.
She told me I was taking up too much
of her time. Last week she started
sleeping at her mother’s place.
She told me that she shouldn’t
have let me get so attached to her,
that this whole thing was a mistake,
but how can it be a mistake
that I don’t have to wash my hands
after I touch her? Love is not a mistake.
It’s killing me that she can run away
from this and I just can’t. I can’t
go out and find someone new
because I always think of her.
Usually, when I obsess over things,
I see germs sneaking into my skin.
I see myself crushed by an endless
succession of cars. She was the first
beautiful thing I ever got stuck on.
I want to wake up every morning
thinking about the way she
holds her steering wheel. How she turns
shower knobs like she’s opening a safe.
How she blows out candles blows out
candles blows out candles
blows out candles blows out
candles blows out candles
blows out—
now I just think about who else
is kissing her. I can’t breathe because
he only kisses her once. He doesn’t care
if it’s perfect. I want her back so bad,
I leave the door unlocked.
I leave the lights on.
What the Cicadas Don’t Understand
It’s September. Don’t you know, cicadas,
that it’s September? The timing
is never right, cicadas. We never get to see
water becoming ice. Nothing
is ever right. If you fall asleep you always
wake up in the same place. You can
learn to sleep but that won’t make you
a sleepwalker. You can learn to love
but that won’t make you
a prisoner. You don’t know
how to fix a bathtub drain, cicadas.
You run your finger
around the trap to clean out your long,
long hair, but every time
I tell you that, you don’t listen,
you never listen,
cicadas. It’s hard to hear music
when you are always making it. You can’t
douse a fire and then
blame the ashes. You can’t sing when it’s cold,
cicadas. Steam, cicadas,
is the opposite of song, and remember
when I told you we never
get to see when water becomes steam?
We have to communicate,
cicadas. You have to tell me
what you need before everything
falls apart. Yes, you told me once.
You can’t push once and watch something
fall over. Nothing changes just because
you want it to.
Moving Day
Today, as I was finishing the move
across town (and isn’t it funny
how cliché, the literal catharsis
of throwing out all the things
I no longer need: my Seasonal
Affective Disorder lamp, all the
egg cartons, you know, for the project,
all of my ex-girlfriend’s stuff
that survived the two previous purges:
curling iron, candles, painting
of her own face, swimsuit, bottle
opener, blender, all the now-dead
Christmas lights, all the food I can’t save,
the chair, the older chair, the sheets
in which the bad thing happened, the things
in the bottom of the box that I will
try to landfill but will, as always, keep: the toy
my mother sent me that is just a squishy heart
filled with larvae, the bicycle
part I cannot identify, the handwriting
I also cannot identify, the sheets in which
the bad thing happened, the sugar
bowl, the sugar, the textbooks, the
instructions and signs and limits) a sparrow
flew just over my feet, its wings beating
against its own body, a sound not unlike
applause, and it hit the ground, and because
it was dead it lay still.
Little Poems
Everything You Ever Needed to Know about Silence
You will never be more wrong than the first time
you say “I love you.” You will
mean it, sure, but you’ll still be lying.
I Didn’t Recognize You without Your Glasses
Though you chose to die five years ago, Alex,
I still write your name on chalkboards
and stray sheets of paper. I always
leave out the E. I am not finished
with you yet.
How to Kill Yourself without Hurting Anyone
Don’t.
Things that I Hope Are True about Heaven
That the radio always plays
what would have been your favorite
songs. That there’s always coffee
if you want it. That you’re
there. That it’s real.
Still Life with Pills
I too have wanted to open myself. I too
have stared at a razor and seen in it
a doorway. I think I am only still here
because I was too scared to make
the first cut.
Clatter
It is impossible to imagine a color
you have not seen. Instead of dying,
the jellyfish simply ceases
to move. I complete five crosswords
a day because it stops
the panic. Trucks are downshifting
on Main Street. Hair is partially
composed of cyanide. Napalm
is just gasoline and plastic. I am just
carbon and bad timing.
The First Snow of the Year
Alex, since I’m still here, I have to act
as though I meant to be here. Once
it snowed, and it wasn’t that I felt
great, because I felt awful, but awful
is better than nothing. Depression wasn’t
an endless grey sky, it
was no sky
at all. I’ve got to go somewhere. I’ve got to go.
It Has Been and Will Be the Year of Airports
I don’t know where I will get
the money, I don’t know what
I will tell my friends, I don’t know how
we will love each other in the nights of cold
and quiet, but airplanes exist and will fly
between where I live and where you are
so hold on, I’m coming.
I Don’t Know What “It” Is, But I Do Know where to Find It
It’s in the light sifting through your bedroom window.
It’s in the street when the whole world is pinched and slow.
It’s in the basement where you left it.
It’s in the ground. It’s in your head.
Don’t Give Up the Ship
When the winds are picking up, when
the sea around you turns from blue to grey,
when the sky grows veins of light
before you, let your arms become sails.
Keep the lighthouse at your back.
I Cannot Answer You Tonight
No one ever taught me how to pray,
so I won’t. Instead, I’ll just say this:
god bless the shape your head leaves
in my pillow; god bless your insatiable
hair; god bless you, though the hour is late,
for you have come to me at last.
Parking Meter Theory
after Richard Siken and Paul Guest
That the coins become something other than coins
once the meter has eaten. Perhaps hamburger
patties. That we, therefore, are also
feeding the city. That the meters are a people
and that they are so very patient. That the credit
card-operated meters are an invasive species.
That we know not yet what we do. That parallel
parking is like making love but more difficult
and in public. That the curb is the border
of a great nation. Perhaps the curb is a shoreline.
Imagine one sidewalk as England and the other
sidewalk as France. Imagine parking meters
with longbows and trebuchets. Imagine
the poet imagining parking meters
in stupid metal hats. This is, laughably, considered