B R I T T M E L E W S K I | Monsoon 2014
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List of Rivers in the United States
You are asleep. You snore words of wisdom like Jesus Christ, the poison on my lips is like lemon honey. There is only one Band-Aid left for the two of us and we bleed. Each promise has been left shivering in the cold dark aisle, a shoelace untied and caked with mud. Men have never cried so freely. We are unrecognizable in our dream: zippers behind our ears, drooling IVs hang from our veins. A river runs through you, makes its natural rest in the riparian zone where a ministry of angels lives in thatched huts. While communicating gently with the Coquí, they take long walks, patrolling the habitat, protectorate of golden fauna. These angels keep rifles slung lightly over their shoulders. They steady their beads against the glacier and whisper fragments of psalms. They move faster than legend. Their notebooks are covered with crossed-out peace signs, stoic stick figures draped in frowns. Near the left bank, there is a stake signaling that blood has been spilt. The angels are not afraid to see blood. They are unafraid to be the ones to open the bodies. with all the things you’ve touched I hold the crushed grape in my mouth long enough that it becomes wine. That’s the trick: to dream. To excuse one’s self and time. When it doesn’t work, when the enzymes don’t match or clash, you die just like the deep winter stories foretold. Though, it was spring: the dogs out in force, drawing us out too to take care. I’d dreamed you again. It had been years. Reunions swept away like braids of sweetgum. In the air, we walk by one another, maybe nod. There’s complete agreement and no distraction, an abstract understanding of systems inside systems, the weightlessness of a clang. We could finally see the same vanishing point. It was each other smiling back. * |
Britt Melewski has certain expectations which stir the acids into his blood, his cells warping like a caricature drawing of a crying boy. He has certain expectations that the dirty beastly animals go straight for the children’s legs, all the poison cigarettes be stuffed with Jell-O. His are the lights in the trees humming croaked songs of the lies of cranked television sitcoms. His myths are as false as his bitchy status. The poem is an act of removal. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s thinking. Britt Melewski is hard to say.
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