i’m here in the bed in the room i grew up in. i didn’t grow up in the room, the room grew in around me. elbows into the windows and fell out onto the roof slope, tumbled myself in lilac and birdcall, tulip squash to run to the forest, sneak to the highway slip, that long yellow line, long spiderweb road that spattered me onto the atlas like paint, like spark, like rain.
you said “a raindrop on the highway”, then “fuck the floor away from”, you know i want to, you know that. i’m on my belly in the bed in the room that grew in like dandelion roots and sputtered me out the window like milkweed, somewhere later i stumbled into you in words and we tied our tongues together to make meaning, pushed our breath together for drawing pictures on all the old bedroom doors leaning on the hallway, shadowy and unhinged.
you said bricks and hammers and what are you building? you said earthquake and “you’re biting your lip—” and then the city trembles when i tell it. you said “red. red.” you said home not in your mouth you said. i start to know your back where it curves and your voice when you’re reading. i start to know how to fog you and press my fingers against your glass, pressing pictures. i taste paper in my mouth. sharp breath of catching letters on our tongues. i know what you look like with your mouth open.
home is a place full of whimsy and nightmare and snow-persons and plate boundaries and none of it means me. home is birds flying into the wind. the walls. home is a constellation i want someone to show me the parts of and the history of home is holes in the sky.
do you miss me?
my body is fidgety, whining for it. full of empty to breaking. i want a sex of words. i want lips that can breathe me can speak my round places like they mean it. can press wet poems into me like leaves, press me like a leaf in a book, pick me up and hide me away from where i fall.
i fell off the city like a carousel.
the horizon here filled with silhouettes of places i probably miss.
out in the center of the pond i made an angel in the snow and thought of you.
–ali lanzetta
ali lanzetta is a woolgatherer, teacher, and bookseller who lives between trees and sleeps under blankets of books. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Hunger Mountain, Verse, Switchback, Eleven Eleven, Sugar Mule and elsewhere. ali is enamored with giraffes, whose hearts are over two feet long. She lives in Vermont.
–Art: “Botanical (2016)”. Construction by Ira Joel Haber
Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture.
Copyright 2017, ali lanzetta. Copyright 2017, Ira Joel Haber