Poet Joshua Clover and 11 Students May Face Prison Time

can’t look – look,
by meghan tennison

the calendar makes me bite on my burns
that have no creator, says my memory,
and the more i ignore time,
the less i do with myself
besides walk
away from people talking about things
that they don’t even care about

“how do you think they feel
when you make those sorts of
faces?”

i could tell you something brilliant
as if i think things through, as if you deserve that much from me,
but i haven’t gone that far,
and all i really wanna say is
i don’t care at all
so let me absorb whatever
reddish blame blot goo
that i can marvel and poke at when thrown/flown/flowing.
(i know someone’s been blaming me for
something much more dark and ruined
and i know they dress up just to ask me things
even though
i’ve told them
Everything -
[i was never quiet
to begin with]
)

stranger, lover, friend, lover
turned into paper air
you linger, scratch, try to ignore the busy me,
and only pass through my face
while i sleep

(i dreamt of that one place again
that i made up years ago
with the sky-tall trees and the treewater -
you had four different bodies
and wouldn’t look back into my eyes)

i notice
because my lungs start forcing themselves
to jump with a heavy breath
and fall back down
too fast – “now you have to do the rest”
you’re so flattened-out it dries my throat
and i can’t think through your thin noise anymore
screaming quietly-pathetically enough to
inch out burdens
from my self-grounded eyes
i wish you could accept that i have no time for
what’s too hard to understand

something evil’s going to happen soon
where i’ll have to face the Reality
that i can’t love everyone i want to
which’ll only
grow some sort of monster jealousy organ in my belly
so that whenever i look at others
stuck in the past or not
i have to
delete what i say

i tore my nails off
so unevenly
trying to make them look better
you’ve got to see it
my index finger bled
like a melting kool-aid popsicle
you’ve got to taste this
it’s so red