Lea Graham



Crush #60

Because, as John says, there's never enough escapism
we all wish to be Roberto-Bob on a prison break
with a recipe for rabbit and a pocket full of idioms like
We all scream for ice cream coming upon a clearing
(because there's always a clearing) and Nicholetta
with bread, wine, bedroom hair and eyes, the clothes
of her dead uncle Luigi to outfit the boys as they watch
her dance with Roberto-Bob, eat their eggs, drink coffee,
listen to rain and a road diverging: Texas or Mississippi?

    Us-we can't live
in the present forever watching them dance, wishing
this Louisiana stained in celluloid ours
like the imagined wall: Bob was here







Crush #66

To press and bruise between two hard bodies


barking dogs or engines
somewhere away in
other lives where night
in its heat and perfume
lumbers off to restless
morning-two bodies'
fulcrum, lever:
something chipped or blue-green
prints left inside an arm








Crush #79

Intense and (usually) passing infatuation

. . .High heels clicking into evening along sidewalk just outside this basement window
above these words assembled on a page:      Please             please
please                          please
. . . .


O where are you off to
tonight?








Crush #111

Alter

Was it that story I told
The one where my heart
Was-as I love to say-"broken"
That listed your ear    this
way?             Or some dropped octave
my chair swiveled towards: low, guttural-
changing the grammar
to this loose pairing: heart fingered in condensation,
Cassiopeia
from the roof?






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