an auntie anne’s in the wild is a strange and beautiful thing
this time it’s you eating hummus in palestine. i’m riveted, lost thinking about
licking your teeth. scraps of tahini behind your molars, all slick with my spit.
remember when we could spit on each other, tony? last january i would walk
by the hookah bar on my block where lovers sat blowing strawberry smoke
into each other’s lungs. delicious, like the ice cubes made of blood they give tigers
at the zoo. i watched them melt, so red. delicious, like the egg salad you ate
in okinawa. you’re conflicted about the strip clubs darling, and i’d like to take off
my shoes for you. as kids, we used to tell stories about the cereal killer, his victims
smothered with chex, drowned in lucky charms. i tried to tell my therapist about how
alone i felt in the hotel room with the blinds open, but he only wanted to talk
about disney world, frozen yogurt, and chocolate bars. this is new york, man.
a wednesday is a friday is a saturday is a sunday. the ocean is so blue in marseilles.
on the screen it’s rosé wine with eric rippert and i hold my breath because is this it?
the one where the hotel—the scene changes and my stomach floats back down
to my abdomen. not yet, tony. another five seasons to go. meanwhile, it’s sea snail
cooked with wild fennel and orange peel, slow simmered in garlic and saffron.
it takes forty hours to pick 150,000 saffron flowers, leaving one kilogram
of raw spice. i’d dump it all on your head if it’d make you stay. don’t you get it
my love. there’s so many children who want your scraps. fuck them following
you into an afterlife, fuck an afterlife at all. i don’t know about your siblings.
who did you leave behind? whose kittens begging for droplets of cream?
i see an auntie anne’s in the wild and text my brother. it goes nowhere,
an s.o.s. sent to a ghost. dawn says the opposite of devastation is fruit, so
i’ll take a plum, please. i want you to pull out my heart and put it in your box.
i already know there are one hundred girls left in this broken city more beautiful
than me. but i can promise you, tony, i have the sharpest nails and the tightest pussy
and i taste like america. i taste like freedom. i am your freedom, i am freedom.
anyway, in cuba, you are a flag girl and the vintage cars rev their engines for you,
thirsty for your kneecaps. when the checkered flag goes down i almost vomit
with the pleasure of it. your fingers send missives from another planet,
and i keep forgetting to take my medicine. detroit, and you’re a steel beam.
las vegas, a stubbed out cigarette. i can see the tattoos you got in tibet on your arm.
i can see the tattoo of the anime girl on my brother’s wrist. take your medicine,
lindsey. take your goddamn medicine. broken links on your wikipedia page leave
me eroticizing your trip to tanzania, and i’m afraid i’m complicit. i’m not ready
for this all to end. let’s keep going. in my dream about the field everything is yellow.
Lindsey Marie Siferd is a college admissions counselor who moonlights as a poet. She has been previously published in Cimarron Review, Atlanta Review, Vagabond City, and Sortes, among others. She lives in New York City and is currently a candidate for the MFA in Poetry at Columbia University.