Recording, Day: Hour: Minute
00:00:00
he offers me a half eaten box of chocolates
because he got hungry on the way over. Later,
as I puke into the traffic of a highway, he lights
his cigarette with the sun
00:07:05
together we stand on the rooftop, two black birds
stuck in the inky tape of old answering machines.
I want to bottle lightning to ignite the brushfire
in my throat: the end of the tunnel
00:15:21
I press my pinky into my ear until the thoughts of him
stop, run my tongue along the edge of the scrap corner
holding his number
04:23:34
standing in my door jamb, he’s the static
of passing under a bridge in a hailstorm: whirring
dust orbs in diluted desk lamp haze.
I try to simulate my own electroshock therapy
by pressing the line of skin from wrist vein to foot arch
against the hot bulb to stop the panicked shivers
10:14:21
I suck at the rust-marrow of the shower vent with my teeth,
but only end up swallowing a wasp that makes my bones vibrate
15:14:21
our heels catch on cement split with dandelions. Standing
still will get us lost: the lull before the movie credits roll. I kneel
out the window of his car and watch the rain in horizontal motion,
we are a broken record playing the same line lost
thirty miles back when we started to pick up speed
Seismic Fragmenting
I’d set out to discover the hazmat sign
around her tense, slim neck. To understand her
bobbing knee left me running my tongue
along her conchoidal fractures, torn between
a statue in her door jamb & giving her space
of a thousand bumblebees. Her geocached lipstick
smears made me a TNT stick lit from both ends.
I remember dry pine needles under her
bare toes, the crunch
of my molars against I need—. Her tight-lipped
smile lasted the 365 day trek without falling
to pieces I built, believing I could chart her
pink tint with fingers alone.
Sarah Corcoran is a junior at SUNY Geneseo studying International Relations and Spanish. For the most part, she enjoys the insanely large amount of snow in her hometown of Syracuse, New York and freezing her toes off skiing. If she could, she’d have tea with George R.R. Martin to find out how he will end his series.
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