Collective Poetry Reading

My mum cut up onions in the air-conditioned room in the morning
Because she said
it was too hot to cry alone
I was sitting in a corner, waiting for the poem to happen
Onions happened first.

After she left, the onion lingered
Entering crevices I wish were left uninterrupted and challenging me to split open
Like onion was mocking at my poetry.

The wounding is inevitable

I hope you remember that I was wearing a green t-shirt
And maroon tracks and they didn't synchronize
Which tells you what thought I put into my effortlessness.

Put down the phone when I read out self-authored autobiographies and diary entries
And create your own biography  of me and then when we trace
Lines back and forth to each other
Through crackling low connectivity,
I'll watch your name pop up on Google Documents, yellow halo-ed
Erasing my lines, replacing them with your version of mine.

I hope you are archiving this.

It shakes me up, this bracketing off of
Parts we love,
This common touch we have  learned to find in the same lines
The way we identify with a common sense of tearing- up
Tearing apart.

I heard of this play in Normandy
Where audiences pay to watch a woman
Turn on her stomach on a bed on a stage and they wait
Until she cries
The show runs full house and after a point
No one knows who is crying or why they are crying or if
Crying comes with purpose
Smiling comes best without purpose
I bet they leave, their top hats and gloves and walking sticks to match,
Wiping tears from the corners of their eyes.

Poetry reading is its own kind of poetry writing
The immortality isn't in the poet
It is in the flesh wound we carry in our hearts
And her binary fission.

Each time I have lain wounded in battle
Your battle wounds have synchronized to tear up in that very instance,
With the time difference of a text message
And two blue marks
What does it tell you about me, that I want to see you
Hurt how I was, where I was.
What does it tell you about you,
That you want to be hurt
How I was, where I was.

We finger books and leave them marked
In a wild attempt towards immortality
To hope the broken parts repeatedly break in history.
I like dog eared books because have some faith, goddamn you,
Have some faith that I'll loyally find you and
I'll patiently wait until you come back
And get excited when I see
That you have offered me a bone to pick,
Twin Crease Marks.

At some point, when you wait outside
I'll want to open the door and let you in and offer
Tea and cake like your mother used to.
I'll play out our inside joke inside because the doorknob will be broken
because the wind will want not let me
Open
Up
will you wait until I find a book thin enough to slide under the door?

We have lamented that books of poetry
are so expensive and so thin
they are the perfect size
to let you get in.