MAY (NOTES TOWARD A FEELING)

MARGOT ARMBRUSTER

Roadkill on the tracks. When it rains the air cools

                25 degrees. I bike past identical storefronts, the

                                Chinese buffet with stone lions at the gate.

An apartment building, gentrifier murals on the wall.

                I’m not inside my life, but where’s left to go? I love

                                the culture war, the biosphere instrumentally.

Why here, or why anywhere. The ruined year slips like

                algae from my tongue. Salt remembers the ocean,

                                gauze recalls the field. My back remembers her

hand. I hate the highway. I hate the summer and the

                bruises on my legs. In the race for psychosomatic

                                talent I’m first-class, which would make one time

I’ve been beautiful. I read a novel where salvation

                obtains in an instant, bewildering, stupid as brick.

                                I wanted to be undone like that, glow like a shadow

puppet in hindsight, my darkness lovely. I wanted

                her lips against my burned shoulders – I still seem

                                to fall away from language. And if I cling like

a garment to loneliness, are you the brown paper

                that folds me, are you the static seething like breath?

                                My eyes as blue as ever. In my dream, clearing

verdigris from a coin, you asked if I was lost. I said:

                yes, but not where you would think.

Listen to "Venice Bitch" by Lana Del Rey, selected to accompany Margot's work, below: