design & illustrations by Chaitra Bangalore

poems by Tanya Azari

lockjaw summer

deep roots

untitled

untitled

ode to ex-girlfriend

he makes you feel small

and the sheets, soaked through

where you go to when you go away sometimes

two shaky commas in this bed

palmful of paper airplanes

pedagogy of living

epilogue

summer like the recovery half of the freestyle stroke.summer like the drive-in movie when the filmstrip burns up, likeour starcharts whenVenus is in retrograde. the hair on our legs sticking to each other.a small child playing in the water fountain asking me, are you aboy or a girl. me, telling the small child, it depends on what i feel like when iwake up in the morning. summer like the hotel of my body with a broken VACANCY sign in the windowlike, honey-did-you-remember-to-lock-the-door-behind-you,slipping keyrings on each others’ fingers,farmer's market blackberry jam staining our teeth heartbreak purple,our limbs surrendering to the year of thepsychosomatic growth spurt. year of the skyscraper windows,siren call to all the birds. summer of the deep ache totear out all the walls between our rooms andpaint the ceiling like the seafloor. the small child asking me again,are you a simile or a metaphor?

lockjaw summer

Julian & I put our lunch into tupperwares and hop on the train where it hemorrhages above ground. He says we're going to Chapultepec, I say Coney Island; he sees my theme park and raises me an urban forest neck deep in skyline. For 45 minutes we don't think about our lovers. For 39 we bruise our tailbones on the hard plastic seats. At least 6 minutes are spent hanging from the railings or running through empty cars. We pass love notes folded into cranes to each other. We pass as straight. We pass a bus broke down on the side of the road.

deep rootsAugust says that Shannon was born

in the extra hour after midnight.August says that Shannon’s drum set

is jealous of the rhythm his fingers play to his thighs.August says that Shannon sleeps

in the backyard, even though i see him disappearinto the room two doors from mine.

by this he means:

August sleeps inuntil 2pm every day.

by this he means:

that boy has been through more terrible thana burning bush split by an earthquake.

twigs outside the door and foliage in the entryway.

brittle tendrils hanging, greeting his six-foot frame.damp earth, deep roots,

heavy pots keeping them stable.lichen surfing the turntable.

August says this

old growth is new,appearing down the hall like an afterthought:

one day his room was empty,and one day it was not.

his soft mouth all over

the floor. his dangerouscrowded against the windowpane.

one day he won’t stop holding onto life,

and one day he pushes it away.

who put the plants in the bedroom?who put a terrarium around the luminary?

who put the glowing boy intoelectroshock therapy?

meanwhile, the girl with the pink hair wraps herlegs around my neck. she draws andquarters my body for the last time, asks me to lie,watches my frame unfurl. she looks like a boy that looks like a girland i would do anything to make her want me again.maybe i'm a story she’ll tell her friends.maybe i'm a punchline, instead. in her bed, i am a still life painted as a rotoscope.in her mouth, she’s water and i'm dowsing stick. i bike home fast, scraping my knee when i break too quick,feeling like a piece of fruit that had itsskin peeled off for a party trick.

ode to ex-girlfriend

August has his tongue in someone else’s heartbreak wound, andJulian’s on the roof, twisting paper cranes like they were cigarettes. saying,he’s straight, Cam, and my best friend is a red peony,crushed in between someone’s palms. rewind: we show up at the party and lose each other,but i find August and he’s found the wave-break shape of a new person to push against. rewind: Julian quits smoking, August quitsrock climbing his fingers down Julian’s arms, at least when they’re in public together.Julian starts carrying around small squares of paper. rewind: August meets Julian, Julian meetsa model-pretty boy with olive skin and a slow, smooth kind of walk, and he knows he’s straight, but Julian knows he loves him,and it’s up to you to know which is which. and another boy realizes something cruel about himself thathe won’t talk about. and another boy suffers on the good touch of someone who can’t love him right.

he makes you feel small

and the sheets, soaked through we haven't seen Julian in 8 days and there's a new body in August's bedroom.she leaves her dried sage on the living room table.ashblack tampons in the bathroom trash can.i can see stains five feet up on the wall where she’swhispered incantations into the insulation. August treats her like a love spell.she says my name like asummoning sung offkey. everything she touches is glowing.everything she touches ipretend is my body.

the door opens one night and sings the weight of something into my bed. the boxer in my heart clutches at its chest. but it’s August’s breath, hot on the side my face, an open oven door when the bread is rising—“Cam I miss him,” August says to my right temple, and my heart rolls off the futon body sagging with relief and something like disappointment, feeling his voice speaking to my clavicle this time, his body burrowed into my side like i could somehow hold him together, “I mean he makes my face feel like everything's in all the wrong places," like, Picasso started kissing him one day and decided to never stop.

where you go to when you go away sometimes

two shaky commas in this bed

i loved him in the way a Cam loves a Shannon. i didn't want to love him in the way a body loves a body. the way an emptiness loves whatever fills it.

Julian, hollow boned, windowpane pure.chest wheezing like abroken radiator. Cam I'm(the most important thing to me)sorry for running away. but i’ve forgiven him. i always do. he’s the only one who looks at me andchooses to give instead of take.his queer kissing mine awake. this is the way we love each other.bodies flush with something completely different,kicking our feet against old broken boxcars,casting off our skins as the flashlights pass by. writing our stories in water on the walls.our secrets which are not reallysecrets at all.

palmful of paper airplanes

pedagogy of living

the city wears a plastic bag over its head to the party.gives us pillowtalk at 3am in the

backseat of a taxi,hums to itself when

the trains pass through.

the city is beautiful when it’s drunk,flapping tongue all honest, says to us,

loneliness looks good on you.brings out the wanting in your eyes.

catch the city kissing itself in the mirror.

catch it on the rooftop with abottle of wine.

Shannon, a butterfly knife, flipping around someone else’s wrist. Shannon, the wine bottle after the bar fight. The bloody knuckles and the bruised eye, all at the same time. Shannon, a typo in the playbill. A page missing from the middle of a library book. Shannon, a lip split against crooked teeth, bones cracked against concrete. He pivots off the 6th story balcony before we even realize it's not a metaphor/ anymore.

epilogue

love me and watch me human disaster.love me and watch my dysphoria take flight, a crush ofhormones murmuring their way down my legs. i’m the home of a polysyndeton of ex lovers, none of them quite knowingwhat to make of me. trauma sewn into the lining of my stomach,waiting for a body to press it into my bloodstream, waiting for a body to find the glass box above my chest that says“break in case of emergency;” the gaps around my body whereno one is supposed to fit, the fist in my gut that comes out when someone touches me. my body a gift everyone kept trying to give me.my body the wrapping paper always shredded on the floor. my bodya bad dog, licking itself in public, and always, always begging for more.

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