BlakeCurran

I park parallel to the gutter, turn the car off, and sit a moment. The engine ticks slowly cool and I watch a couple of cars pass by me and find spaces further down the street. My car is comfortable and quiet and I have forty-five minutes to kill before I should head to class. I pull the lever on the side of my seat so I can lounge back as though I am in Dad’s armchair at home. It is overcast and the sun has only been out for maybe two hours. Everything looks greyer. From my new vantage point, I can see a construction site about thirty metres in front of me. I wonder what they’re building—it looks very square, and as thoug

I want to live in a sprawling house at the top of a mountain, where I can watch the sun sink below and then float to the surface of the sky, the air dusky and hazy but still somehow so clear. I want to watch storms play with trees like twigs, crack lightning like whips to make the bruised clots of clouds thunder by like scared stallions. I want to hold you closer to me, let the candles be our stars tonight as the rain begins to rush down. I want to let afternoon meander into evening while I lay with you in the hammock in our backyard, let it swing gently in the breeze, the only sound nature: no cars, no television, just you and me and life.

'The Last Stop Hotel' really was.

I am that sinking feeling in your stomach, that pain in your head, that screaming voice in your mind, but most of all: I am that weight on your shoulders. I am the temptation when you know you shouldn't, but still you do. I am the murkiest depths of your morality and there's nothing you can do to stop me. --- I am the lightness of your soul, shining so brightly in the dark that it hurts your eyes. I am the never-giving-up, be-a-good-person-or-else- what-are-we-all-here-for thoughts that propel you everyday. I am the smile to strangers, the gentle generosity to life. He may be the devil on your back but I'm the angel he'll wish he never cros

An ode to you; a grateful nod to Snapchat You sent me a Snapchat from Engadin St. Moritz, a phone message from the Swiss Alps, thinking of me in the midst of there, of all places: wish u were here xx The picture was beautiful, but only because the frame was filled with your face. Eight seconds wasn’t enough to take it all in, but afterwards I could still see you with my eyes clenched closed: a smile like lime juice—fresh and stinging and sweet— lips the blood of berries—made that way by the cold, no doubt—lips I wanted to trace with my tongue, lips I wanted to pore over like a map of somewhere I wanted to go&mda

She gives him kisses of aniseed like liquorice roses held out, or thunder cascading in the distance heralding rain, signifying the needling downpour to come. Hungrily, he takes them. He turns them in his mouth like aniseed humbugs, sticking to the inside of his cheeks. “Come closer,” she thinks out loud, and so he gives her white wine thoughts signifying nothing like so many drunken nights spent staring into the distance. But there is no distance between them, which has to be signifying something, surely, apart from aniseed breath, pushed out onto the man who tries to come closer in degrees of infinity. “Come here,”

It’s 3:26 already and the poet doesn’t know what to make of this dreary mid-afternoon, with the clouds all low and grey and the lawnmower’s static fuzz in the background. “Won’t you do this one thing for me? Please?” “No, I already told you: I’m busy. Flat-out. Can’t chat. Now shove off. Please.” “Fine.” “Fine.” “See ya.” “Goodbye.” It’s 5:44 now and the sky’s as grey as slate as ever, the lighting dim and the air damp. The poet dreams of dense sleep, but she knows that if she goes now she won’t be able to later. &l

You close your laptop, hungry for discs of cabanossi and cheddar shavings, and aching in the throes of indecision. Yet here you are, shut up completely. Discs of cabanossi and cheddar shavings flow in abundance at parties like these yet here you are, shut up, completely lost in daydreams and nightmares, which flow in abundance at parties like these— well, you should know, except you don’t: lost in daydreams and nightmares, which more or less, for better or worse… well, you should know. Except you don’t. You close your laptop, hungry for more or less, for better or worse and aching in the throes of indecision.

I dream of storms singing barbed-wire hymns over the sound of trees whispering lies to the wind, attempting to sit on rims of glass cups overflowing with the sky’s nectar, potent with potential. It dims: the flash of omniscience fades from eyes and the hymnals are shelved, the trees retake up their incessant susurrus.  I wake.