Let us lie
underneath a coffee stained sky
blend the brown of our skin with the brown of the earth.
Moist, fertilized, this is a reincarnation.
So that’s the poem, what do you think? He asks with half rhymes dangling from his tobacco tinted tongue. I shrug and frown that’s how New Yorkers respond. Feels like he wrote this before, serenaded an ex girlfriend who sat unaware of the effort it took him to come up with an ending. Yeah this is déjà vu. Dangerous déjà-poetics that paralyze right hand impulses but still we pop E pills, fill our E tanks with fuel for love. He was from the Boogie, I from Brooklyn, yet we spoke the same language. Keep reading.
I’m almost there.
Let us lie
among the singing crickets, crack their crispy green scales
during public love making sessions. God is watching
and she’s listening intently as we orchestrate nature.
We are the music.
His poetry is like the salsa songs I grew up on minus the congas and timbales, like hip hop legacies minus Run DMC, like Adidas shell tops minus the stripes, like the Apollo minus the lucky tree stump. Still it’s good background noise as we tweak. Its 2:15 in the morning, but my neighbors don’t sleep and neither do we. Pass me a cigarette, will ya?
I’m almost there.
Let us lie
in bed sheets that change colors, sweat through pores that change motives,
and penetrate tonight until tomorrow is born. One day we could be
lovers. But for now, I just want to count your goose bumps,
hundreds of them, and give each single one a reason to exist.
Newports shrink in mouth-aided bear hugs and ashes falls through gaps in the fire-escape. We stand there squinting as the sun taunts us with her bright slutiness. The darkness is almost over, paintings on the wall lopsided and his poetry subsided. “You should write about this moment”, I tell him. Love poems are overrated so we kiss, spit, and blink.
I’m still not in love. Go figure.
Maria Billini is a New York City born and bred poet with an MFA in poetry from The City College of New York. Previously her work has been published in Shakefist Magazine and the Promethean. She is currently working on three chapbooks, Beautiful Mentirosa, Cuchifrito Dreams and Gentleman Prefer Virginia Slims. Recently, she had the pleasure to perform in the Show N’ Tell Em showcase, Nuyorican Poets Café, MFA Reading Series at Bar 82 , the CUNY Turnstyle Reading Series, and the SpeakUP showcase at the Sofa Lounge.
