Somewhere In-Between We Thought
We sat in a crossroads: hallway floor
With an unassuming carpet that may
Or may have not been just vacuumed.
Our legs were crossed, he had lost
His mind or was in the process of losing
It. How impersonal to pluck it off tongue
And to continue missing something:
The wallet, a wad of five dollar bills,
An orgasm he’d been expecting, pills,
Creased margins to a book promised
To have gotten back to, a few lighters,
And too many missing men or bodies:
It matters how you look at them. We sat
For what felt like a change of a season,
Discussing nothing in particular. I was
Trying to convince him the river was only
A carpet. That we weren’t floating. That
We are real. Those ghosts wouldn’t harm us.
And a thing unhinged in me, torrential.
An unexpected tier broken from me.
Something was missing. Both, he and I,
And this damage all around. A nick of
Wood. I reach for it. I place his tongue
Back into his mouth. Where’s home?
It’s here. Arms outstretched on this carpet.
He says he can feel his tongue again.
Epilepsy
I cannot seem to love things that have been done
Against me: the coffee scolds my tongue,
Breathing on my own is a luxury to come around,
The slight mercurial taste leaves a froth
In my mouth and I worry about powerlessness
So often I don’t consider the acts
My brother has pushed against me.
He toppled many a treasure I once owned:
CD collections, frail magazine covers plastered
Against my wall as montage to my identity,
Fists swinging to actual break of the skin.
I want to hate him. He flings his arms
At the drop of a pin. The left side of his mouth
Convulses. He relinquishes all control of self
To the machinations of the brain. Infant. Lover.
Fighter. He dozes off for a hundred years
In a dream. He wakes up, the body defeated.
He teaches me to love things done against me.
Anthony Aguero is a queer writer in Los Angeles, CA. His work has appeared, or will appear, in the Carve Magazine, Rhino Poetry, Cathexis Northwest Press, 14 Poems, Redivider Journal, Maudlin House, and others.