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leaving montgomery park

we’re careening— well, that sounds dramatic. not careening— but sliding, holding you and myself in place— because my disposition leads (and has always led) to believing abandon reckless will kill if I let it as close as myself and yourself held only by bicycle rope or kayak rope or moving box rope side beside inside truckbed backseat forgone throats slicked with City of Roses forest gin and Artemis Moons I’m sober and you’re not I’m anxious and you’re not you’re carefree spit-balling about side parts and saying love and love as we pass long-haul truckers— eyesclosed Lyft drivers— that pinkie-promise coworker to fast friend elbow to elbow barefoot to clogs off in the cab shallow river dipping mask off cheek pinch I-tell-everyone-you’re-my-cousin kind of love that no mother could ever that no father could ever that kind of love that door we kicked down and threw into that mustard bonfire of before that old worthless hinge don’t work so won’t bother not ever not now not in this truckbed— I toss my thoughts to traffic fine me $900 for littering lock me up for language you say what a beautiful city my glasses are in my pocket those empty offices stacked apartments and windowbeam glitterblurs fall into the nightvoid I’ve seen beautiful and more unmatched in those words you weave so keep weaving them— I’ll be here listening long after we pull into the driveway. (& if u like it, I linked my poetry newsletter :)

@chickeninshoes

May 14, 2024

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Substance

Really i am coarsing through your veins. Bleeding you out. Striking a cord. Relinquishing my spine. Relegating autonomy to the massive misogyny. Reckless. unstable and a brat. Something to say at the least appropriate moment, It was us all along. The flute stayed in tune. I decided long ago I would stay. Only to let go of who I actually was. Be there when you can. You never were. Bribe your way to my heart. Lend a helping hand. Decide to be yourself. The glass shatters and I reflect on myself and who I used to be. Bad bad bad. All the same to me, I don’t care if you die of thirst. Your green with envy and it shows. Quite the pussy cat. The elixer is mid greatfuly so. I take my bath and lay myself bare. It shows. Just where have you been. All the while I have been searching and finding no release as to who I want to be. I choose this time. I decide where to put it. Wide awake and endlessly falling asleep.

@gk

Mar 1, 2025

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date idea

The sharp scent of rain tumbles clumsily in as you tease window-hinges wider with the pads of your fingers. A siren trails close behind, uninvited, sears your eardrums, dies off down the block. Your neighbors are arguing again. Laundry, loans, lack of commitment… like yesterday, like the day before. You think it would be suffocating to wrap yourself up in someone else’s sheets.  It’s five o’clock. Leaning against the sill and flicking the radio dial with one recently manicured nail, you tune into the local news. Roaring wall of static, then calm conversation between two anchors bubbling up through an old set of Panasonic loudspeakers. You are feeling incomplete today, like yesterday, like the day before. Rigatoni boils in the kitchen. You check the leftmost cabinet and find strawberry jam, unopened. You check the cupboard and look over a tub of tahini, a collection of canned soup, and a stack of pie tins. You check the counter, behind the cutlery. Finally, you check the fridge, ducking down to see only your own brown-eyed reflection in one last — now empty — jar of Prego. Your shoulders dip. You slip on white sneakers, not-so-white-as-they-once-were. Why did you try to paint the front door? It is peeling now, ugly like a fledgling losing young feathers. Flecks of buttery yellow dapple paisley carpeting. The great outdoors wait for you at the bottom of a cramped stairwell with twin light fixtures, both broken. A sky like an old sweater is draped above Brooklyn, ready to wring itself out again at any moment. Once around the block, rubber soles brushing damp cement, you walk briskly. At first you fling yourself against the humidity, then become self-conscious and adopt a slower pace as you near the corner store. Two dollars, sixty cents. Like last week, like the week before.  You and I, we are looking down at our phones and stumble into each other, halfway home. It is no one’s fault. You recognize me from somewhere, you say, and feel like a bad person for lying. You have never seen me before in your life. I ask for your number. That night you eat too quickly, knowing you’ll wish you’d saved some leftovers. I come over once, then again. We go out for dinner at tacky restaurants, where art deco posters from the nineteen-thirties have pinned themselves up in scattered flocks across worn-out drywall and the menu is printed with strange font on laminated placemats. The appetizer sample photos are unnerving; the bruschetta cowers like a scared animal awash in excessive camera flash. I make a joke about it, and you laugh. We order dishes to share. The food is always better than I expected, but not quite as good as you wanted it to be. You don’t mind. We talk for hours. We agree, ballpoint pens are better. I hold you, and the ten p.m. bus pulls you out of my arms and through the dusky streets, past crowds and utility poles. I hold you, and we rhyme our steps. Burgundy is around us in the leaves and in the dirt. You wear a coat I gave you. I hold you, and we swat flies out on your porch. The days are getting shorter. I hold you, and we watch blu-ray CDs you found on sale. Soft light from the flatscreen plays across your face as you fall asleep. I keep the movie on a little longer. I hold you. In December, we bring a blanket to Long Island and listen to the sound of snow falling on the dunes. You call in sick for work too often. I hold you, and you know my callouses well. We share the same sheets; we are wrapped up in each other. I hold you, and kiss your hair. You smell like candied oranges. The afternoons eat away at one another. Dishes pile like uneven layer-cakes in your kitchen sink, crested with suds. You say you feel uninspired. Now we argue about laundry, and the sounds of your unhappy apartment are heard through half-open windows.  You shout, eyebrows furrowed like the pages of a book. A white plate soars from the grip of a trembling hand, misses an upturned chin, and interrupts us with its shattering. This time, it’s different. Sleep escapes us ‘til the sun is already planted on the easternmost rooftop. I hurt you the way I learned to, and stay awhile, but don’t know why I stay. We sink into sweet, heavy things: the saxophone in “Charcoal Baby”, shared creamsicles on hot Saturday evenings. I see you less and less, and remember less and less of you. Will I see you next week? Yes, if you text me. You forget, just like we’d both hoped.

@ad

Sep 17, 2024

Top Recs from @saoirse-bertram

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Absent ephemera

Bereft of a true home, I dwell instead in sentiment and practice the collection of numerous small tokens thereof: an olive-pin, a tea-tag, a berry-shell, a fortune. I treasure the incitement of memory brought about by these little markers in time-passed, as I do that incited by the more obvious strains: postcards and Polaroids and locks of hair … and these too I try to accumulate, these too light me! But perhaps what is most meaningful is the undisplayable — that which is gone — letters received and lost, letters writ and never sent and lost; a poem misplaced in the loose-leaf of a moulting notebook. A garland of flowers or bouquet that remains only in a blurred photograph; a collection of photographs drowned in a flood. Since my adolescence, some of most beautiful pictures I’ve made on my cameras have been the nonexistent — the mechanisms failed or my Nosferatuesque fingers blocked the lens or or the memory card betrayed me or the film was overexposed through actions entirely beyond control — yes, the most beautiful, I say! It is just so. I can picture them all behind my eyes in perfect clarity — so so beautiful — as beautiful as the flowers that nevermore will fragrance a room and all those words which forevernow lay unread. I can’t speak exactly to the wider benefit of this “recommendation”. But somehow this is the sort of thing that makes me happy.

@saoirse-bertram

May 10, 2023

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Ultraviolence outtakes

There’s a limited selection of poets that can move me to tears without even reading through their stanzas but allowing the recollection of their words to pass over my mind — the aforementioned Bachmann is one of the real ones, T.S. Eliot is another; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on occasion; sometimes-too Hölderlin, Herbert, Hadewijch; at least one Donne piece has this power, at least one Brecht; perhaps-too I would add cuttings of Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible — contemporarily, the lines of Paris Reid, an absolutely gorgeous young Canadian I discovered several years ago (her first published prose piece can be found in the most recent Heavy Traffic) certainly effect this movement upon me time and again … who else? — well,  the only other living writer to fall on this list, and quite honestly my most exalted favourite of all-above, should be obvious to anyone who knows me … yes, yes, of course: singer slash poet slash emotional-genius Lana del Rey, my personal saint and hero … truly, her words either brought to sound or put to page surpass the Scripture to me and this I would not say if I did not mean it violently. She has held aloft my life: she is probably the third factor to my continuance. You know — as I type this — I can hear the lyrics to Venice Bitch, perhaps the greatest lyrical song ever written (though a strong case could too be made for Video Games!) echoing within and my vision swims — so overcome with emotion am I! Good God. My friends, it’s unbelievable. And everything she does is fantastic, of course, but lately I have been really been spiralling about in her demos and bootlegs and regional exclusives dating around the release of Ultraviolence, her third studio album. Pray listen; I’ll leave you with this. Say Yes To Heaven: breaks my heart. Fine China: breaks my heart. I Talk to Jesus: well, you know, onward and onward, from here to eternity…

@saoirse-bertram

May 10, 2023

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Kenka

Maybe this is played-out in the eyes of anyone who’s spent much time in Lower Manhattan but it’s such a classic for me. Kenka is that wacko Japanese basement off St. Marks that serves a wide range of cheap bites and cheaper beverages — the cheapest prices in the city, for all I fucking know; for an emptywalleted and literally starving type boy such as myself, the prospect of an udon-bowl, a miso soup, a French fry, and an agedashi tofu for about fifteen bucks altogether is so dreamy … beers are a buck fifty, a pitcher of beers is eight. I used to come here with my best friend, who is a very beautiful girl, to play the Drunk Challenge, which is a sort of game where you challenge yourself to drink a pitcher of beer and become intoxicated … those were the days … since her attitude went more-or-less downhill, I mostly just go here by myself now, or sometimes with Patrick. When I’m alone I’ll write out some ideas or reread Tropic of Cancer or another book of that vibrational frequency or get accosted by one of the other drunk men there, which makes me drink faster so I can leave. In fact this is a wonderful thing: the sooner I’m schway, the sooner I can get all impulsive, and at least a few more hours of life are saved from the wasting indecision that has murdered so many of my moments. C’est la fucking vie.

@saoirse-bertram

May 10, 2023