Issue |
 |
March |
|
a poem by Cyndi Dawson
1986: A No Heat Space
We might have been listening to The Ramones
but God knows I have long term memory loss.
What I do know for certain is that you
were high as Orpheus and we skated through
hallways, imaginary blades connected with feet--
unaware of frigid air, this no heat space.
Dishes stacked for days blended into stains
in an old porcelain sink.
It might have been you who said it first,
that only blocks away Sid had murdered Nancy.
You can't make this shit up. Something about it
seemed so romantic. Because you had
rockstar shoulders, necklaced by low slung guitar.
Because we were chemically parallel, we were
sailors coasting same city floors, tilted.
If you killed me now I might be famous, too.
Somebody turned on an amp. Then I heard it:
her singing, from another room, a siren in its
ether, and I knew she would come rabid for you.
I knew if I slipped prostrate, glimpsed you,
beautiful with light slipping from pore and lip
that the way her hips changed with seconds
you would reverse coma a kiss for her
hoping to tear skin, hoping it would end in blood.
but God knows I have long term memory loss.
What I do know for certain is that you
were high as Orpheus and we skated through
hallways, imaginary blades connected with feet--
unaware of frigid air, this no heat space.
Dishes stacked for days blended into stains
in an old porcelain sink.
that only blocks away Sid had murdered Nancy.
You can't make this shit up. Something about it
seemed so romantic. Because you had
rockstar shoulders, necklaced by low slung guitar.
Because we were chemically parallel, we were
sailors coasting same city floors, tilted.
If you killed me now I might be famous, too.
her singing, from another room, a siren in its
ether, and I knew she would come rabid for you.
I knew if I slipped prostrate, glimpsed you,
beautiful with light slipping from pore and lip
that the way her hips changed with seconds
you would reverse coma a kiss for her
hoping to tear skin, hoping it would end in blood.