three poems

by Jason Davidson

balloons

don’t sing in the graveyard, sweetheart, you said. I didn’t tell you anything about the dream I have most weeks. I said nothing about my hands and feet, legs and arms shackled to a thousand balloons, and how thin the air grows the higher you go. balloons aren’t birthday parties, baby. let’s not miss our flight. I rub your feet after your bath tonight but you are radio static. you ask again about the dream and I say, of course, sweetheart, we can have whatever you want for dinner tomorrow. I turn my face clockwise so you cannot see my eyes. I wrap my heart in turtle-feathers and linen, so you cannot see where the belief lies. if I am not allowed to sing for tombstones, then how can gloom dance like this outside our bedroom window? Emily Dickinson is shaving her legs in our shower. dead blackbirds make funeral pie while I rise, alone again, in our kitchen. what wings! I am spellbound. I am in awe of the rolling boulder of this shared life. I fold laundry because we are too tired to fuck. I write of the centipedes lingering in my chest like best men, nettles, all these messes. I am too tired to write. I hold your dying inside me like the night we met. memories are soap bubbles. you smell of river rocks. you smell of death. you call for our dog that has been gone for years. I feel his weight on our bed as heavy as the sweat left after a night unslept. so we crept into one another’s armories, sweetheart. my army of you is anything that lingers and everything always unbroken. your silences fill me with sweetness and clean sheets. while you sleep, I tell you of the dream. I explain that I dreamt of a world without you, and that in this graveyard, I no longer trust God. all that’s left are chests and nodding questions. for every one balloon I’ve loved, a thousand more have popped like winter bones. you are my phone booth. you are my stone-age. someone loaned us this time together. borrowed time. I am bleeding out. I am lingering into the bank to repay this loan. the universe is filled with bullshit.

after you’ve gone, all I do is sing in graveyards. the tombstones have eyes peeled like thieves. I check my pulse, but there’s no place for the cold to go. above me, I cannot see the sky, for it has been blackened by balloons.

A Nice Day at the Clinic

Ethel catches me hanging the laundry on the line. It is a fine day, I say, as I do not yet recognize her. Without speaking, she scrubs insecticide and ejaculate from a pair of spotted boxers. I do not wear boxers. She smears the seed into a clouded petri dish and starts a screaming stop-watch. So much good our best intentions do not do us.

The babies explode into the air like a logical miracle. A missionary position. A goddamn Lincoln-Douglas. Papa, Papa, Papa! I am not remarkable. I am barefoot, I am tired.

I want to tell Mrs. Rosenberg a few secrets. I want to tell her that I loved someone very much. The person I loved more than enough played her on a dark stage. The air crackled and bald people clapped. But Ethel is too clever for that. You are too clever for that. She has catheterized me and the Orange Julius fills my gut. She is sucking off a machine gun and none of this is funny. I lie awake at night and am no longer capable of laughing. The babies blend into the scenery, for they are only background players.

Lake Superior

the rainstorm was late today, but how I waited. Old Nokomis came, she looked the same. she closed up my umbrella, she sang of how I’d tampered with the rain.

quickly then, before it fades. I flushed my phone, scrubbed off the blood and hid loud within the blanket fort. they said you’d show up soon. (note: if you are the They in this, then speak now, Pegasus. simplify me now, that’s all I ask. note: I am inviting you in. here, now. the blankets are soft.)

I have taken far too long. I hold the little wax doll in my hands of clay and I show her the way. I swallow her whole and hold my stomach. Inside, I am an egg-beater. I am your broken tango. (note: this is a course in the practical arts. feel free to jump in as you’d like. I’m not one for small talk. we made love in the prairie and never spoke again. so much for small talk.)

mother one calls to inquire how my pregnancy is going. she wasn’t concerned about the fact that I wanted a boyfriend, but she found the first one paltry. so, she was still hungry, but also dead. (note: this thing, dead. clever wording.) she laughs until she screams. I left all the poetry in the box. I rub my stomach and sing to baby.

mother two calls and asks about sex diseases and money. I shake the tree with both fists and a silver bullet covered in blood falls on my head. (note: second boyfriend was beautiful. second boyfriend was death. are you still there, They? are you listening?) she asks about money again and I remind her that I am alive and she is dead. cold and dead in San Diego. I have mastered this art of forgetting.

(note: this is the part where you may want to look away, They. I will still love you in the morning, even if you look away.) I miscarried in the middle of the night. I wailed and woke up the dogs. we gathered around the toilet and sang to her. I told her that I would always love her, even at sunset. dead? check. forgetting? what? I’ve misplaced the question. god, I’ve gotten good at the watermarks. (note: If you are still They and still there, your seat is open. you can come back now. you can do this, Pegasus.) I did not tell baby about the line of little wax dolls, patient on my dresser.

When I die, I will drink of the shining Big-Sea-Water. I will open like a faucet, Old Nokomis, and I will follow the flowing ocean home.

Photo of Jason Davidson

BIO: Jason Davidson is a poet, fiction writer, playwright and performer. He's written and directed over 200 works of experimental theatre and his one-act plays have been widely published. His poetry has appeared in Unbroken, Cathexis North, Quibble and other journals. Jason lives on California's Central Coast with his husband and four-legged children. Find him on Instagram at @jasonwriteswords or visit his site at jasonwriteswords.com.