Postcards across the Table

Eric Crawford

To Girl:

This. A fine fine.
Your cheeks are red––feeling finch,
are we. Trampled hair sleeping
in weather. Bullshit, I say.
I’ve never seen two shoulders alike
as I see these two, both rejecting
bra straps made out of sea shells.
Why hasn’t the water taken you?
Somewhere a little boy is singing a song with your name in it.

To Boy:

When I slide this across the table
I can’t wait to watch you watch it slide.
Your chin has been for the birds,
in the sense that they should nibble
out of the butt of it like it’s a small dish.
I can hear you breathe, I can hear you hear.
Struggling with finger habits. Poor child.
You just rubbed the dangly part of an ear.
Let me touch you through this paper.
The word of the day is carbuncle, just not today.
Let me touch your hand.
Let’s hold hands across the table
and act like we’re praying, but don’t snicker.

To Girl:

Girly girly girly.
Sweet-tooth mad. A bird.
We need to invent a new word
for you-know-what. Me first:
foretruppidom. Or we can use a code phrase:
someone forgot to translate Stevens’s titles.
I used to be where I’m supposed to be. But I prefer it here. The view
is beautiful, is you. Knick my fingers
when you take this and say whoops.

To Boy:

This is your face in the light of death. Calm, and sad, and happy.
We haven’t gone to our old spot in the wood, because we never had one.
The only thing we can do in the future
is invent a past for ourselves. This is a great sign of a miserable life,
with regrets for memories.
Our souls are stitched up with the souls
of native peoples.

To Girl:

I see you folding the last piece
precisely and flattening each fold
with your thumbnail because
I’m taking too long with this. I am not looking at your breasts,
my body is looking at your body, which is like a firm sack of flour
that I want to open and dip
my finger into. I just realized
that to lose the practice of metaphor
is losing something quite significant
that has nothing to do with paper.

To Boy:

Your face is a jack out of its box
that can never quite be put back in.
I like to bite my forearm like a dog
and then smell that spot,
and I like having my teeth marks
in my skin and watching them go away.
Young lad, we have much to learn.
Look at you, crumpled in your chair, burgeoning into a sex.
Our table inherits the moon
and we are goblets of dark matter.
We could destroy it all with enough. I wonder, at the end of the world would birds
finally try landing on my shoulder?

To Girl:

Your face, your face.
Candles. Licks of flame, hot
diamonds. Blow them out
with lipstick on. You’re the only one
to understand me. That makes me
happy and sad. The backs
of my fingers under your chin,
along your cheeks, down your chest, small tree branches dipped in water.
The world is wearing a corset.
Nobody can get a grip to unlace it. Your hair––what everyone else said.

To Boy:

Sweetheart, sweet tart, peeled apple,
tasting the bits of lips to taste you,
drenched in caramel or peanut butter,
gluing us together. I tongue my teeth
to get the rest of you.
For a taste, just for a taste,
how deep can one kill go? To what end?
To end a future end? Yes, we all want to end the end. I put the end to all this talk so I can take pleasure in the little things, like twisting my skin, or running my index finger
between my toes to remove bits of sock cloth,
or gyrating my hips in front of the mirror,
or waking up in the middle of the night
on purpose so I can experience falling asleep again.
What are your little things?

To Girl:

Rubbing certain fabrics against the grain
to darken the shade, then rubbing it back
to its original shade.
To scrape my cheek with fanning book pages.
Reading with an English accent, a Southern accent.
Talking in the mirror with mostly
a Southern accent with blaring teeth, lips a funnel.
Cracking my knuckles against walls (hollow marbles).
It is getting late and I love you, another thing.

To Boy:

The owl sounds like a dreaming dog.
Yes love let us toast to a wonder. These windows receiving the night,
caves screaming good-night, dark throat-soars cantankerous
with stars and fumes.
Let this paper breathe in
your fingertips. Have it felt loud,
smelling the light of night’s clouds,
tilled like a farmer’s field.