Excerpt from My Favorite Apocalypse

TWELVE AND LISTENING TO THE STONES

Yeah, you got satin shoes. Yeah, you got plastic boots.
— The Rolling Stones, "Can't You Hear Me Knocking"

If I had a best friend, I might not tell her
that once you find your insides
and can tighten them, you can bring the ground
up to your face, bring the earth you're standing on
up through your body, until you can breathe
the grass as it comes through the dirt.
I might not tell her
I have muscles no one can see.
Not only can I keep rhythm and bring it
inside me one beat at a time, I can also clench
right in front of the paperboy's face until I feel a fist
loosening its grip on the largeness
inside me. The most he can see about me,
even if he looks impossibly close,
are the barely colored wisps of hair against my forehead.
They might tremble.
I tighten while I wait for the school bus.
I've worn the snow into ice.
How quiet I can be.
I close my eyes and change the size of things.
My house disappears below me.
The dark moves inside me like hands.

GRACE LIES FROZEN IN THE FRONT YARD

She's stunned, made of colors,
and afraid to move anything
but her eyes. She has landed in the snow
like a tropical bird. She was going somewhere,
a camellia bush beside a lagoon,
a branch so new
she would seem to hover
in the air. But someone threw a switch. The humidity
shrank into ice, and she dropped,

frozen, mid-flight. Exactly
the way she'd planned it : her coat bright
and broken, her face a serious mistake
in a field of snow, his name
caught inside the cube forming in her throat. Better her than him.
When the branches stopped
their kind, slow scratching
of the sky, she could tell

that somebody, sooner or later,
was going to freeze. She'd lose him
either to someone else's latest kiss
or to his own stillness. Lying next to him
would lead to waking up, and waking up would lead
to finding a lump in the bed.
Either dead or disinterested.
She hasn't decided yet if it's good or bad
that nothing lasts forever.

BILLY RECALLS IT DIFFERENTLY

The rattle of my tin shed where I kept
my crocus bulbs was like the rattle
of my teeth as I slid into bed. Packed blooms.
Sweet fists. I liked to be able to look at
the delicate things I would never say.
My house rose up through pine needles and dust.
My house reared up in its white paint and cobwebs.
I shivered as I slipped from its belly
into the snow at quarter to seven
every morning. I blinked to strut my stuff.
Every morning there was a second of darkness. Every morning it calmed
me down. Every morning cold wind for blood.
Every morning was not like this one.
A girl-shaped leaf had fallen onto my bed.

WHY GOD INVENTED THE COLD

To give the people a break
from repositioning their lawn chairs.
To give us a glimpse
of life without bugs. Without weeping welts,
the odd fever, and yellow smears on our shoes.

To confuse the boys.
To force them to ask, "Why do teenage girls
smoke outside in January until
their nipples get stiff? Why do they
stand around with their coats undone and life

smacked onto their cheeks?
Am I that promising?"
To caution the men
that the boys will turn into
against following their semi-aroused girlfriends

into May lake water. Seasonal Affective Disorder.
To break up lonely highways
into manageable chunks. To make it clear
just how stupid it is to climb
the highest mountain. To encourage sweet futilities

like cuddling and mittens. The powerful
sleep lobby. To give drunks a softer, deeper
alternative to liver failure. Blue lips
and frosted eyelashes. Ski pants,
for Christ's sake. Dark roads, tight sweaters,

no boots, and stalled cars. Wanna ride,
need a lift? Country love or homespun
complex legal issues. His word pressed
firmly against her word. Zero degrees
and fourteen snowmobilers missing.

Natural selection. Two feet of fodder
for made-for-TV movies and more expected.
No fiber, calories, vitamins, hallucinogenic
properties, or nicotine without the tar. Just pain
in your membranes, unexpected falls,

sprained ankles, and hyperextended
thumbs. To see if you can
catch yourself. To put you down. You thought
you were mean and hard to figure out until
you found out about windchill.

To give us a way to understand
people who won't give us sex,
meter maids, Siamese cats, what it's like to kiss
your best friend's lover. To distinguish the sweat of euphoria
from the sweat of shock. To up the ante.

Because he could. Because he's lonely and it leaked
out of him. Because he wants attention
and a fluffy blanket that's big enough to cover his toes
and reach his chin. To create melting. To give us
another hint that the body is dead.

To add ice. To let him come as close as he can
to holding some of the glittering water he made.
To let us skate where we couldn't two weeks ago.
To let us glide on top of darkness.
To show us what it means to break through.

WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY

Wouldn't it be a good idea if
we got married? I take thee salty, sweet,
And tart to be my lawful wedded flavors.
I take thee hornet, squirrel, and sandpiper
to be my skittish, hungry brides in sickness
and in health. Our life together will come

and go like daisies, and when winter comes
we'll have our babies: ice, pine, and moon if
we survive the stiff, blue morning sickness.
So I take thee chill and cramp that sweeten
my stringy muscles. I'll pay the piper
for the song of fever, the chef for each flavor

of my slow burn. I take thee sweat that flavors
my kisses and the ones who kiss me. How come
twining stars in my veil is only a pipe dream?
I've taken them for richer and for poorer, and if
nothing else they often lie beside me, sweetly
dying of time, which is my favorite sickness.

I agree with the little girls who are lovesick:
the hungry never get to taste the best flavors.
Good thing lying in bed alone leaves the sweetest
sting of honey on the tongue. When real life comes,
bringing midnight, white nightgowns, and grown-up skin, if
it can, I hope it wakes us. We're unsmoked pipes

until then. We're everything else too. I pipe
the endlessness into the ocean. I take its seasickness
to have, hold, and die from. Especially if
while I drown it savors me like a new flavor.
In the end, which is my favorite time, it all comes
down to need, which is what I can give you, my sweet

husband, wife, betrayer, mistress. My sweet
coo, fall, wing. My silk, velvet, stain piping.
I take thee full, weak, perfumed, wilting. Please come
home, which is like a box. Love is a sickness
I hate to cure. Time, scent, dirt, flavor,
we'd make promises if only we could.

Copyright © 2001 by Catie Rosemurgy. All rights reserved.