BLOOD MOON
I watch a lover act corny on the internet
& my Cloud swells w/ new knowledge
There’s a recent photo of me in burnished Southwest sunlight,
looking relaxed,
& I study her w/ resolve, still tugging
the laundry line of my wants
I ask the internet if anyone wants to switch libidos for a week
I ask Daniel to spot me a soul & I’ll venmo him tomorrow
August is an inconsolable month
spent gulping lushness at the edge of the treeline
Tsvetaeva says However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest
Raena says I’m wearing a bodysuit come get me, just in time
My date says Hope it wasn’t anything I did,
38 min from the time I leave my apartment
Jayson says Stay grounded, love after we get stoned for four days & four nights
in a protective measure against the blood moon
We dipped our fingers into a black bowl out on the porch
& lit white candles from the dollar store
& listened to Toni Braxton
Intentions are what matter here
Lifestyle choice is a term above my paygrade
This is how my life came to me, askew
& baring its unsatiety, beckoning toward
the next astonishment
Sometimes it’s hoodoos w/ bands of white & rust-orange.
Sometimes it’s rustle of tumbleweed, dust whirl, dim lavender skyscape
Sometimes it’s a you-abstraction
Mostly it’s my friends, their hearts crystal-bright
& down to be slung wherever this summer
We’re losing a minute of light each day now,
hurtling toward the solstice
There’s a gentle resignation in Cohen’s voice when he sings,
Ah but you got away, didn’t you babe
like the turning of lovers isn’t our business to think through
beyond its experiential truth
I masturbate before walking to the co-op to feel
more certain about my guac selection
& the long, lone shadow
I accompany home
I ask my phone
What time is sunset
What kind of moon tonight
What song was playing when my heart’s chambers got thrown open
to let these breezes in
SLIPSTREAM
1.
We don’t get to choose
which metaverse we inhabit—
We just don’t get
to choose
I‘m stuck in the one
w/ our sullen proxies,
bickering in the wake of years
The train plunges into
an underwater tunnel
& we freeze-frame, let
the sonorant bloodrush
surge through us
2.
I’ve lost sight of the sweet
spot between patience
& constant motion
You side-eye yr newly-
scuffed pumps on my feet,
say finally: The beer got all warm
I say, We can’t revise
the weather, a knee-jerk
Tension makes you radiant,
I won’t add
Whose stun-gunned
palpitation is this in my ear?
3.
In love, as in work,
you move shrewdly
You don’t mention
who miscalculated
or misread, who thought
we had time
& who idled w/ symbolic
balm at the ready
4.
You call yr life in this city
comfortable, as if to explain
you weren’t born into it
& want to be tactful
about making enough to buy
pressed juice daily,
luxury lipstick subscriptions,
to tell me, I‘ve got you
so often, it becomes
a barbed refrain
In a different reality,
I might’ve brought you
a box of Ferrero Rochers
to diffuse all this
We might’ve strolled for hours,
hands clasped behind us
as elders still do in the countries
we came from
& not this life, where you ask
what I want from you
& the answer is
a clean break
5.
I want to finish anything,
even if inelegantly
& a mode of care that refracts light
instead of devouring it
While I’m thinking on
how to tell you this plainly,
love persists in marking
the places language can’t reach,
& it waits, so that when I return
after some interval, I wobble
like a compass needle
in the presence of a wayward force.
I don’t say where I’ve been
& you don’t question
You slide over, leave a slipstream
of glower & glow for me
Alina Pleskova is a poet, editor, & Russian immigrant living in Philly. Her first chapbook, What Urge Will Save Us, was published in by Spooky Girlfriend Press in 2017. She co-edits bedfellows– a biannual print & online magazine that catalogs discussion of sex, desire, & intimacy– with Jackee Sadicario. Poems appear in Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Elderly, Mistress, American Poetry Review, & more. Find her at: alinapleskova.com & @nahhhlina.
