d a v i d     g r e e n s p a n

 

from Honeysuckle Child
 

MY NAME IS DAVID AND I AM AN ALCOHOLIC


MY NAME IS DANIEL AND SHE DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MY SKIN








































MY NAME IS DAVID AND I AM AN ALCOHOLIC
 

There are no hummingbirds above the ceiling
only dust and tobacco mixed with light
rain. You are a love poem I would write
if I wrote love poems. Glass on her cheek,
the bloated stomach of a horse. Our hands
are not tourniquets, more like crayons and how
often my bones have not fit inside my skin
and oh my skin. My skin is a parachute
with many children inside. They struggle,
rat-tails whipping. I write my life's story
on one side of a napkin. The next morning
this fluorescent tube is a baseball bat
and why not strike it against my face?
I’m left with off-white pills and the doctor
signs his name inside my thigh. The scab
resembling a nervous laugh and I do not
look in the mirror. My head drops slow
from my neck, my fingernails are caught
in her doorway. A smile, so I drink warm
water from a flower-vase and maybe the seeds
sprout inside my gut and blossom a bookcase
or an empty soda can, covered in holes and ash.

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MY NAME IS DANIEL AND SHE DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MY SKIN
 

After the bullfight I wave a shirt in her face,
she charges me with horns and now we are
a puddle of dirt and blood. We burn incense,
The Best American Non-Required Reading
2006. I sniff its ashes like so much cocaine
and chase myself into the living room
with handfuls of baking-soda as the seeds
begin to sprout. I eat her long fingers,
they taste like Dr. Pepper and thumbtacks.
After I rub her eyes and tell her I’m sorry,
she wakes a tree and he gives us an apple.
I grab her from behind like a statue. We are
crumbling. Ants take our pieces to their home
and we poison the ants with alcohol thrashing
in our blood. She wakes and it is very early
but the ants were a dream. I paint our house
with raspberries and mangos. We make red
ice-cream from the leftover house paint,
we rub the shining leaves, we do not touch.
Everything is dark and when I open my eyes
there are bees dripping honey onto my chest.

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DAVID GREENSPAN is the author of the chapbooks i tried to bear the elephants and lost (NAP), and THEN (Turtleneck Press). His work has appeared, or will soon, in places like Anti-, Good Men Project, Pear Noir!, Vinyl Poetry, and Whiskey Island. Find him online at DavidGreenspan.blogspot.com.

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