“LSD” by Eva Clark
people say “love is a drug” and they mean it like addiction or literal science, but i mean it like mania: romance acid star eyes haze color sound, sleep and dream in mud of mud, trips you only read about in journals of woodstock or medicine. real love. i think that’s why everyone in the 70s was like that. peace and violence; mediating middleman indifference. did you know LSD looks like sugar cubes? disguises. innocence. sweet crystalized things that remind you of something else, some childhood recipe or slow morning coffee. dissolves on your tongue like nothing, like it was never there, and suddenly you are someone else someplace new; flecks stuck between lip and gum, invisible aftertaste and sharp when you don’t expect. but does it matter? but now your face is my face, your teeth in my mouth, can souls be swallowed? i prefer tea with honey. innocence is always a myth. love that looks like love is a disguise in a disguise. i think everyone else is right, too. i’m just making a point.
“when you dream of summer only to find yourself already there,” by Eva Clark
you will know me by my sunbleached hair and sweet sugar rings.
when your head feels swimmy and life gets romantic;
when quiet is a slice of a hotel lobby in the middle of july,
you will find me in your bathroom tile grout, glassy, growing impatient.
when your lungs stretch slowly and full of ash,
you will think of me when the colorwheel skies roll, and
when your tan lines seem irregular, unexplained,
you will remember my red-spot skin and death valley fingerprints.
what am i?
we are simulacrums of lineage; merely poor caricature and impressionistic outlines;
figure drawings of misremembered bodies, high contrast film developed with ink spots.
we are warping bone structures of dinosaurs or whales,
punnett squares granted poor grade pointage.
we are a diaspora of grace. complete totaling totals completely.
you are canyons and canyons and no transversal. you are matchstick and gunpowder
on cold wood floors. you can’t get your hair to behave.
—and we are falling out of step.
when you are born with your grandmother’s soft cheeks,
you will see yourself, snarking around saltwater taffy.
when your teeth release the bark of a bulldog,
you will learn yourself, hard chords and a biter, too. but
when you press your hand to the fogged mirror, running with rivulet stripes,
you will meet the hands of angels, of devil creatures and those odd betweens,
and you will come away with a palmful
of dust and gold:
woman, tiger-tailed.
i don’t like you like this
THEN REMAKE ME