appealing

The Maynard
Spring 2015

Carolyn Supinka
0:00
 
 

Girl I

She is this drink I stir. The sweep
of cut straws over my surface, cleaning
me abrasively. I want to say, I value you.

With you it’s like being alone. The best
possible compliment. They don’t come easy,
these friends. These girls talk like it’s

the fourth of July, and we love our country.
Nation building is a sport to her. We pieced together
our own island ages ago. I swim around it in circles.

She inhabits it, and calls me to shore with conch shells
and smoke signals. I see that cloud of black air in my
beach blue sky, that ball of red wool in my pocket,

a reverse unraveling. It’s this love, a word
without the prickles of sex. This want is body-less.
I over-use that word with her. I throw it on the ground

and run over it, I want to pave the streets with it
and stomp until it’s pressed into our landscape,
until it’s breathless and casual as cement.