New Furniture
girl who grew up only with chairs
picks out a couch
for their first apartment
steam is a scam
i envy its swirls and its dance
and how it takes the shape of others
how when it seeps into a
room
into a skin
everyone sees its hot
facade likes beauty
the ones movies whisper
and the youth of people inspire
invisibility and its ability
to shed
John gifted me with fabled tales
of you before we were a we
How you cooled his jets keeping him outta jail
How you copied Dustin Hoffman to a tee
bought the Graduate preppy whale
shirts and 5 speed Alfa Romeo built for he and she.
The time the gang visited you in Bama
snuck a girl in against your sleeping back
you bumped her out, having nonna
their drunken shenanigans in your sack
holding fast engagement vows to mama
not yielding to seduction and revelry tracks
Loyalty and devotion scored
for me and best bud John.
There is no “otherness”,
It’s all just us,
We’re all part of one thing
And you kinda fall
In love
With it
But then…..
You forget.
We need to get the transmission
Ground control
To compassion
“Your loss is not my gain.
Your win is not my loss.”
Put this on repeat
Until it’s the
Top 12 in words by mouth.
We need the compassion-
The empathy-in-action,
The concrete language of love
To speak, in action.
Love, in action.
We need to fight
For freedom
For all of us,
All beings
And our only world:
Home.
The easiest way to unravel
is to schedule some travel.
Then watch yourself steady
fail to get anything ready.
Tuesday cobbling up
a behemoth custom cabinet,
at quitting time consider
how it might fit through
the customer’s front door;
then out with the wife
that evening to the park,
a jazz concert, open air,
we bring wine and chairs.
I swig and backward lean,
lost in svelte trombone,
open my eyes to notice
left of stage, the band’s
moving van, extra tall,
on the side written bold
“This trailer is 9’6”, not 8’6””
Dammit I knew
I recognized that song.
I dreamed of being bigger.
Until I was too big to fit,
uncomfortable in my childhood
room. Unable to articulate.
I dreamed of being smaller
like closer-to-average was a key
to happiness. It took time to find
comfort in my big body.
I dreamed I layed across Appalachia
like its undulating contours were my bed,
like it was the yellow egg crate foam
my memaw would buy to cushion us
against hard old mattresses–
sheets stretched so thin over so much.
It’s okay if you hurt me.
I’ll love you anyways.
Because I don’t know how
to live without it—without you.
It’s okay if you hurt me.
Your world is half-empty.
You love me genuinly.
I make you half-full.
It’s okay if you hurt me.
I am empty.
I have nothing left to spill.
Petals fly
wild feather floats.
Angels hum with cloud ballet
every sound of wind a song.
Flying flocks sing and swoop
the sky a silken hue.
A day to chase your dreams.
-Sue Neufarth Howard
