what’s this thing all about true blue*
erica lewis
you can’t be turning me on and off again
it’s not hard to notice
how you wear the feelings of one person modified by another
in the feelings of one person modified by another
i feel peculiar noticing this
the moment is important to me now though as something special to
put away
and we’ll pretend and say stuff and try to be like
i like you when i think of you
but everything’s not all bright and shiny and distant anymore
what we need here is a montage
“just to show” each other
here is simple and happy/ . . . . . . . that’s what i meant to give you
. . . . . . . . . . . . . [wanting time to insert interpretation of event
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . what got broken what got lost what got wasted]
worn fold of experience
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tells a story . . . but it’s just fake
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . still goes HAM though
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . around the edges of these involvements
contradictions that are so . . . . . . . . . . . amazing . . . . . . . . and sad
that’s what really moves me
these toy-like feelings that fall out of sequence
. . . . . . . we be astronauts . . . . . . . i am fencing off stars
someone said once upon a time and we believed it
*“your imagination”
From daryl hall is my boyfriend
Available from Barrelhouse Books
Also available from Small Press Distribution
Hear erica read two other poems from this book here.
erica lewis lives in San Francisco where she is a fine arts publicist and curates the john oates house reading series. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various anthologies and journals including Apartment, BOMB, Bombay Gin, Boog City, the Brooklyn Rail, Clinic, Coconut, Dusie, Entropy, Little Red Leaves, New American Writing, Octopus, Sink, and the New Megaphone, among others. Books include the precipice of jupiter (Queue Books) and camera obscura (BlazeVox Books), both collaborations with artist Mark Stephen Finein, and the solo project murmur in the inventory (Shearsman Books), along with chapbooks from Ypolita Press and Lame House Press. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
