the port, black and shimmering
what’s the difference between a pier and a dock?
something about our faces, familar
something about dimples
bikes, birds and blue ribbons
all that stuff we hate to love
IPAs half empty or half full
you made me forget how to dance
and tattoos
bodies as temples
a new tongue
and hands
marvin,
thank you for the memory
love, gardens
/I wanted to tell you I remembered that day in the roses/
I wanted to tell you that
I do remember some things,
I remember that night in the roses
a stranger turned friend at happy hour
with the drop of a whatever he’s having
a tweed cap and a journal to pass the time
while he waited on the lunar eclipse
scheduled sometime between
us eating chocolate, legs swinging atop a mossy ledge
and
slow dancing in the last of the wet summer blooms
confusing the steps and laughing up steam
I remember that night in the roses
too narrow sidewalks pushed us into single file,
two butts, one bike, past wiry wet lavander
I interrupted the parade to wax poetic about the Pleiades
recalling the seven sisters and other witches
while she schemed a surprise third-date-kiss,
that would feel like a first
something a little less alcoholic to lift us,
out of our indivudual and unspoken sorrows
I remember that day in the roses
sun glitttered the blood colored blossoms, fallen, dripping and done
a tender and light-footed pair,
we were penciling new maps, fingering mosses
through the newly hollowed structures of our past
I was shamelessly swollen and open,
walking boldy on a half-healed broken heart
and you were somewhere between,
wrapped in new bliss and deja vu
and for the first time in two years
almost content with I am just I
and you are just you.
we are potato bugs
and that’s ok
you are the most gorgeous person
gorgeous because I like the way
the word sounds thick,
rich and too much
I am blown back by the sun
you make me feel rich
like I should be
we’re so rich
like we should be
see, the thing is
the last time I saw you
you were fanning stars from your eyes
and I knew it was my fault
I remember the first time I asked to kiss you
summer on the porch
and when granpa died
and I crawled into bed and you held me
I remember asking to call you my girlfriend
wrapped around each other on the little acorns
I remember how you would taste
kissing hello after biking
reading your homework to you
avoiding mine
doing laundry together
holding hands on the bus
morning rituals of kissing you awake
and coffee
your patience
and forgiveness
and when we cried goodbye
in the shower
see, the problem is
I’m grieving all over again
because I’m remembering
all of you that I want
and cannot have.
Things with Friend had deflated a few days into the trip, with our plans to go to Forks, WA cancelled even sooner. Little Bird was upset that I was sleeping with her and other people at the same time and had asked me to find another place to stay. So I was laying on the big couch at Egan’s house fussing with my waistband. Cramping and singing quietly along to an old Tori Amos VHS , the sugar skulls on the mantle my audience. I felt like my guts were going to fall out, but I was happy. I was cradling a really really stong cup of coffee from the french press,watching the flecks of almond and coffee grounds swirling all together and knowing that the caffine might actually be making me feel worse. I love that Tori looks like she’s getting off when she sings. She was singing about roses and I thought about all the roses in Portland, now dead wet rolled up brown pieces of paper. I thought of the gigantic dead sunflower stalks across the street with their squishy white button tops. Everyone talks shit about the gloomy, rainy Portland winters, but I love it. I thought about how I was to return home in a few days and how nothing on this trip had gone as planned. ”You are so cute right now”, Egan said as he came into the living room. I thought he was talking to the cat sleeping on a puzzle. “Just sitting here bleeding and watching Tori…” I smiled and thought yeah, this is exactly where I need to be right now.
Later, I felt better and I rode the bus down to the Hollywood district to the dog daycare I used to work at. My ex co-worker had arranged to sneak me in to see some of my old dog friends. There he was, Quincy, my four year old vizsla boyfriend. He remembered me and so did all the others. It was an amazing feeling to be back with those dogs I had cared about so much.
I left the daycare with a spring in my step and sang out loud walking on the overpass on my way to meet Egan. We met outside Grand Central and he handed me half a grilled cheese because he thought I might be hungry. I thought I might marry him. We caught the MAX downtown and sat so that everything rushed by backwards. Pioneer square looked like a movie, all of the lights and people rushing around christmas shopping . We talked about Aden and love and sex and gender and the past and the future. Egan is my favorite Leo of all time and every time we spend time together I am reminded of how amazing he truly is.
We stopped by Jackpot where he bought a special Efterklang record he was really excited about. After some time at Powells we headed to the bus and were stopped by an old friend from Anchorage who called to us out of the fancy bar she worked at in SW. She invited us in and gave us beer. We gave each other the cliff notes of our life and showed off new tattoos. ”This is why I love Portland. Portland just gave us free beer!” I shouted as Egan and I ran to catch the bus.
Over the next two days we watched the Efterklang DVD that came with the record at least three times and I became a fan. I finished the scarf I was knitting for Friend that I had put so much energy into, like a metaphor. And I gave it to Egan as a token of my appreciation for saving my vacation with all the laughter and love.
On Christmas Eve Elena came over and watched Queen of the Damned with me. I gave them a speculum I had stolen from the hospital and we talked about love, relationships, abuse, celibacy and the emotional space we’ve had between us this past year.
On Christmas day I packed up my things, ate too much great food, and laughed with good people. As Egan drove me to the airport all I could think over and over was
How can I leave you? HOW CAN I LEAVE YOU?
here there’s a certain kind of light just at dusk
blue stacked on white stacked on pink
the bare trees reach backlit black, upward
I don’t know what to say
a tattoo is made up of hundreds of single needle pricks
we’ve been going to fast
so we sit on the dirty carpet and poke intentionally
into each other
each point is an action
a map
I think of the one on my knee
jess you can
jess you are
in the black sky out the window
I watched the same star all the way back to Alaska
head full and heart heavy
knowing I’d forget the taste of Aden’s mouth
knowing I’d forget the clear color of the sky
what were you like as a kid?
did you get into trouble?
were you shy?
Alex said
that hummingbird and elephant hearts beat
the same number of times their whole lives
and that’s what relationships are like
is it true?
we all have a finite number of chances?
I told Beautiful she was the kind of girl I’d drop anything for
no matter where or who I was with
but I didn’t kiss her in the cabin in the woods underneath a stranger’s quilts
even though I wanted to
I remember vowing to become a musician just to sing a song for her
the people we leave our back doors unlocked for
planning trips and scheduling intimacy
climbing through each other’s windows
the friends we love, the friends we fuck
the love letters we’re writing behind our eyes when we talk
over coffee, over beers
great loves and perfect moments
slipping through our fingers and up into the sky
time and chance and distance
and sometimes working, sometimes not
I want your
cactus
spiral
f note
sunflowers
blue stars
four squares
puzzle pieces
crass
catfish
black spruce
anchor
cupcake
paw print
buoys
roses
airplane
black bird
heart
sinchi warmi
bambi
highbush cranberry
ship
clock
totoro
don’t worry
diamond
imaginary moon phases
stars
stars
stars
I’ve never told you that I love you
I told you too soon
I tell you all the time
I don’t tell you enough
What did it feel like?
It was more than physical pleasure, and different than regular penetration. I felt out of my body and I felt more in my body than I ever have before. I thought about birth, death, coming. But I didn’t even want to come, I just didn’t want it to end. The movement, the pushing, the twisting, the wetness of the lube on your hands. A version of home. I trusted you completely, but I was still a little scared. “Almost” you told me later looking at your hands.
It wasn’t our first time, but it was our first time face to face. I thought about how nice my First Time might have been if it had been with you.
Your nose ring kept falling out and you let me ride you on top. It felt amazing to hold you so close to me. Your body hard and soft at once. I was reminded of how nice it can be to fuck your friends. We kissed hard and soft. You pinned me back and pulled me back into your arms, I felt drunk. You bit my shoulder too hard, but I secretly liked the mark it left. We fucked with the lights on and I noticed scars, tattoos I hadn’t seen before. You made faces you hadn’t shown me before. Pressing up against you in the secret attic, I didn’t tell you about a forgotten crush rekindling inside me. You seemed to have enough on your plate.
In the morning you made us coffee and waffles and we talked about family and racism and cultural appropriation and cats and coming out. Outside it was dreary and drippy and dark, but I felt hopeful despite it. You made me feel sexy and respected and interesting. I walked home with music and noticed buildings and windows I hadn’t before.
On Christmas day there was bright sun above the trees outside the window of the empty bus. I watched the store fronts and people pass as I rode through parts of Portland I’d never really been through before. Hiking up my sparkly tights walking from the bus stop, I thought about holding your hand. I fantasized about you riding up on your bike as I clapped my boots down Interstate. You’d flash me that intoxicating smile and I’d think about how good you look in eyeliner. And you’d be thinking what I’m thinking: that I’m leaving today and it’s our last chance to make out. And you’d just kiss me right there and we’d laugh all the way to the party.
I went to a birthday party today over brunch. A vegan and gluten-free feast. Some of the people I knew, and some of them not. I was anxious because I hate small talk, it makes me so uncomfortable. I feel like strangers ask me questions just to hear themselves talk. I feel boring when I tell people what I do and I feel stupid when I tell them that I’m not in school because I can’t afford it right now. I glued myself to Kevin and Honey Bucket until they had to leave and I mostly had to fend for myself. I was anxious because the house was very fancy. Lots of art and rugs. Alaskana.
I went to the sitting room to put my card with the others and caught sight of the view out of the large windows. I pressed my forhead against the glass. The freezing Kenai Peninsula. It resembled the bluffs in Portland in some strange way. The window fogged with my breath. I thought of my mother. I remembered I was not in a place where it was appropriate to cry. I wondered if the tree I was looking at was a black spruce. I wondered about the foot prints in the snow. I tried to picture where I was oriented on a map. I drew a heart in the condensation and then wondered if I shouldn’t have.
Back in the kitchen and breakfast nook I submitted to the dreaded small talk and it wasn’t that bad. Emiline showed up, my savior. We sunk into a big love seat and talked about teeth and jokes past lovers made at the expense of our sensitivities. We talked about Boycations and Man Rambles and male nudity in film. We talked about our health and highschool and the journeys we made in college, physically and emotionally.
Matthew and Sarah played the banjo and accordian on the fireplace. Sarah looks like Portland, I thought. Thin flannel, thick rimmed glasses, greasy boyish haircut. She may be the only one in all of Anchorage. It occurred to me that this brunch, this vegan brunch with young people playing covers of Hurray for the Riff Raff, the beards, the flannel, the fact that almost half of the people there were queer, this might be the best of what is here. If this is all there is, I thought, at least I have found it.
Later some of the guests left, some helped clean up. I watched the lady of the house scrape a bowl full of left over cream cheese and a whole stick of left over butter into the garbage disposal. I talked to one of the lingering guests about whether or not God has lips, or any erogenous zones for that matter. We talked about wanting to visit villages but not wanting to live there. I showed him my leg tattoos. I told him about my grandfather’s memorial and it seemed like maybe his eyes got wet for some secret reason. I felt attracted to him. I made up a rule that it was ok to get a crush on someone who was a gender different from ones you normally go for if it was over the holidays.
The birthday girl opened her gifts and cards. I gave her a patch with a bike on it, a tube of glitter glue and a pin that says “I <3 female orgasm”. Her parents gave her remote start for her car and $1000. I started to realize this friend of mine came from a class background much different than mine. I hadn’t thought much about her background before. I thought about what I could do with $1000.
My tires spun in the deep snow as I maneuvered out of the suburban winter hideaway. I passed my old elementary school. Everything looked so different. All the trees cut and a shopping center I didn’t even know existed. I put on that Des Ark CD I’ve been trying to take a break from so I won’t stop liking it from listening too much. I sang along and my voice sounded raspy and I liked it. I thought about my Holiday Crush. I thought about hating feeling stuck up here. I started to get anxious about What I’m Doing With My Life and The Next Step. But then I thought about my mom, and felt an unfamiliar a sense of calm. I realized that right now I’m exactly where I need to be.
Nina defied death. I guess I should say defies because to my knowledge, she’s still kicking. She was a reckless, spirited genius, a gorgeous alcoholic.
I had been in Portland for almost two months exactly. My roommate, Stacy and I had driven down the Alcan in August, two days after my twenty-first birthday. We were staying on our friends’ couch, a couple from Alaska, ’til we found a place of our own. Two dogs, one cat, six bikes and four people in a single bedroom on Division. Stacy and I didn’t know much about the bar scene in Portland so we spent the summer nights biking back and forth between the two closest bars: the one with 75 cent “buckets” of PBR and the lesbian bar, The Egyptian Room. Sometimes on our way home we’d drunkenly circle around and around the roses of Ladd’s Addition, losing ourselves in the maze. We thought it was romantic. Its beauty, its novelty, was not lost on us.
We ended our nights at The E Room a lot. They had fairly cheap drinks and “we didn’t have to worry about guys”. Whatever that means. I was straight then. Not like I identified as straight really, but in my head the thought of touching someone else’s vagina kinda grossed me out. I remember we’d sit at the bar and I’d be anxious that all these lesbians could smell it on me that I wasn’t one of them, they’d make fun of me, or worse maybe they’d hit on me.
So on Halloween night we had been given tickets to an employee party at The Montage. It was a great party. Free drinks, flame throwers and other performances, lot’s of people. But we didn’t know anyone and everyone was in masks besides. We decided we wanted to go somewhere more familiar and took a cab to The E Room. After we got our drinks I went to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror I decided I didn’t feel comfortable in my costume (“heterosexism”- I was dressed butch with a black eye). I washed the gel out of my hair and the make-up off of my face and then dried my hair with the electric hand dryer. When I came out of the bathroom Stacy was pissed. She was upset that I had taken my costume off because she still had hers on (she was a Greek goddess). I tried to explain to her that my costume didn’t match my gender presentation like hers did and that I wasn’t being a poor sport I had just been wearing it all day, even at school. It didn’t matter, she ended up leaving me at the bar. I was hurt that she left me, but I wasn’t going home early, not on Halloween.
By the time last call came I was pretty drunk. I asked someone for a cigarette and went outside. After a few drags I remembered that I didn’t smoke anymore and held out the cigarette asking who wanted it. A tall woman with a skate board raised her hand and trotted over to get it. She said her name was Nina. The man she had been talking to followed her over to me. We chatted for a bit until the man said he had to get up early and walked off. He had been covered in blue yarn. When I asked what he was she wrapped her arm around him and proclaimed proudly, “He’s Tangled Up In Blue! It’s genius right? He didn’t have a costume when I picked him up!” It was good, I had to admit.
So Nina and I were standing alone watching the other drunk people stumble out of the closing bar. I can’t for the life of me remember how it happened but suddenly we started making out there on the sidewalk. I remember standing with my fingers hooked in her jean pockets, eyes closed thinking: this is weird, this is different, this is what it feels like to kiss a guy. I had made out with girls before, I had even had sex with women. But it wasn’t like this. I hadn’t felt desire or passion or pleasure, not until this moment. She pulled away from me, her eyes were green like mine. “I gotta go” she said. And she skateboarded off into the night.
I stood there stunned. What the fuck just happened? The bar was closed so I made my way home. I walked down the middle of Clinton St. because I was afraid of the unlit sidewalks. It was like someone had just unlocked some secret part of me. I just kept gasping aloud, “I’m gay…? I’m…gay. Oh my god, I’m gay!?”
Halloween had been on a Wednesday, so that Friday I went back to the E Room hoping I’d run into Nina again. To my surprise she was there playing pool with some people. I was nervous, but I walked over and said hello. She seemed glad to see me. I assumed the people she was with were her friends, but when they weren’t paying attention she pulled me into the bathroom and told me that they had followed her there from some sports bar. She asked me pretend we were going home together so the aggressive bull dyke would stop trying to get in her pants. I was happy to play the part. But then as we were plotting, the scary dyke burst into the bathroom angrily and got up in my face “Are you taking Nina home tonight???” she snarled. I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do, I had only been a dyke for like two days. Nina grabbed my hand and said “Yeah, she is.” The scary dyke huffed out of the bathroom and Nina and I grabbed our things at the table and bolted for the door tripping over our stuff and laughing. We ran to my car and I gave her a ride home. She told me she had a crush on me and we made out again. She said she wanted to take me on a date. I was elated. I was gay. The world suddenly made sense.
Nina was not the kind of woman I would ever date now, but how could I have known my type? She was intensely beautiful. Dark hair in some weird freak haircut I can’t even explain because it won’t sound hot, and it was. She had piercing green eyes, not just because they were beautiful, but because she had this way of looking at you like she knew the secret of the universe and was just waiting for you to hurry up and realize it too. Her body was tall and medium sized, but she had a good hand full of ass. A very nice ass. She was a poet, a lyricist. She would take me to open mics where she would animatedly rattle off pieces about the cops or peace or fucking or abuse. None of them were about me. Actually, I’m pretty sure I was just a place holder. Someone to get drunk and go on adventures with. She would grab me by the waist and kiss me obviously on the MAX. She would shout at anyone who didn’t approve. She was always picking fights, stealing, and dropping her bottle of whiskey out from underneath her jacket at the wrong moments. But the bus drivers, the bartenders, the strangers, no one cared. It was like she was immune to getting in real trouble. I enjoyed being her sidekick. I fought the urge to tell her I loved her.
One night at an open mic at a dive in Northwest we got kicked out. Her for leaving empty liquor bottles under her seat, me for writing “N, YOU ARE THE HOTTEST BITCH EVER! LOVE, J” in a bathroom stall. I didn’t tell her it was the first time I had been kicked out of a bar. It was probably just her first time that week.
I also hadn’t told her that I had never dated a woman before. She was actually the perfect first woman to go gay for. The sex was like training wheels because she was always so wasted that if I messed up or didn’t know what to do she wouldn’t remember it in the morning. Still, I don’t know how she didn’t pick up on it. I remember the first time we had sex. It was the first time I had made a woman come, or seen a woman come for that matter. I remember being breathless. I told her that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She must have thought it was just flattering pillow talk. We had been sleeping together nearly a month when I confessed that she was my first. She was weirded out and if things hadn’t started to fizzle between us, they definitely did after that.
Eventually I got tired of dealing with her drinking. Our dates weren’t fun anymore, it was just me babysitting a twenty-eight year old drunk. Trying not to get kicked off the bus before we got home, trying to avoid her puking on my carpet, making sure she didn’t sleep through her alarm and get written up at work again. Plus I had developed crushes on two of my classmates who I had more things in common with anyway. I stopped calling her on the weeknights, she stopped calling on the weekends. Our last date was seeing Tori Amos at the Schnitzer. We ran into one of my crushes from school and she could tell I liked them.
After that night she just kind of disappeared. I saw her a year or so later and we exchanged numbers. We talked about getting a drink together sometime. I wanted to sleep with her again out of nostalgia, but we never did end up getting that drink.
I cried about you
all the way to sleep,
little bird
your familiar toothy grin
I remembered for a moment how propelled I am by love
and how sweetly you did and do
and are
how sweet you truly are
oh little bird,
I cry even now
I never wrote you a single word
and I don’t know how to begin
or end
gripping your ungloved hand tight
following you through the snow
falling through the snow
we didn’t need the whiskey to be drunk
I pass your shop pretending it’s not your shop
I pretend you’re on vacation
I wait for a postcard
from the unfamiliar places you must be travelling now
today I heard what sounded like gunshots
I looked upward and alert through the rain
saw a squirrel on a thick branch
covering his body with his wiry tail
my boot cracked on the bottom and water seeped in all day
they asked if I was good friends with you
I said
no
one sopping sock
I climb the familiar hill
and find a goldmine of fallen pine cones
large, wet, some open, some shut
I stuff several in my sack
hoping the owner of the yard in which the tree sits
does not view this as theft
I wanted to give you that first pine cone
I truly did
why am I thinking of fingers through your hair
this wasn’t supposed to be about you
I look for the little blue car parked on my block
every time I come home
I contemplate class
quiet on the pin-striped couch
stitch deliberately
cutting thread with teeth
I accidentally snap branches
apple picking
and dance to avoid smashing
endearing little slugs
I pull up lavander
and rub it into dog’s collar
inhale its familiar scent
and am reminded of your fur
clapping boots on pavement
I sing a little song about you
watching dusk on the overpass
forget it on my way home
cats watch me rinse blood in the sink
I let it back into the ocean
to be pulled by the tide
or at least enjoy the idea
I venture carefully into bushes
dog at my feet
cradle the delicate berries
all the way home
I write and re-write
a fool if I tell you
(a fool if I don’t)
unfinished poems pile:
…a light manifested timeline of you
now with little pin holes of me
which my light shines through…
…tonight I walked past the bed of a truck
where you stood so matter of fact
realized you dilated something in me
and I don’t like to frame things that way
“you did this to me”
but the thought of you inspires new things
hidden things
brilliant, deeply hidden things…
like this one
frayed
and uneven
what I mean to say is
a friend once told me I was pretty
like a raspberry
I want you to know you are beautiful
like a blackberry
cityfolk can be so fearful
that they may never know
what it means to view the stars
without their own light
tonight the moon
is a marvelous crescent
laid in full cradle
I hold it
cityfolk have a hidden softness
a lush and undulating
microcosm of precious verdure
more than veiled
they hide so deep
I want to find it
their cunts are vibrant milky crescents
intoxicatingly succulent
salty sweet and savory
illuminating our bodies
their scent dilating my core
the moon is so gorgeous tonight
in a clear winter sky
with only the stars to keep her company
she can finally think
she can finally fill herself out
slowly
