A Poem by John Casquarelli

I used to write wishes on paper airplanes

 

each hurricane is a car thief

riding by moonlight

to open space measured by

illusory waves that leave

random debris for us

to throw at one another

to stone ourselves with pet rocks

because it’s easier to believe a story

the less true it sounds

 

my hand on your thigh

you smile as if nothing happened

but when our conversation shifts

to music theater last night’s rain

you pretend to look out the window

surprised that I didn’t see the fish

in the ship’s wake

 

and you want to know why

the same questions return now and then

like those little facts that tug on the end

of a line

so that the whole world

pirouettes rolls shatters

near girders to one thousand

miles of asphalt highway

impaired by excessive anxiety

 

scream about how it all

was just a misunderstanding

to avoid what remains

of your bite marks

on both my neck

and imagination

 



John Casquarelli is an English professor at Boricua College in New York. He received his M.F.A. in the Creative Writing program at Long Island University. He was awarded the 2010 Esther Hyneman Award for poetry. His work has appeared in several publications including Pyrokinection, Downtown Brooklyn, Kinship of Rivers, By The Overpass, The Mind[less] Muse, Brooklyn Paramount, Pulp, The International Rebecca West Society, The Poetry Project Blog, and Sun’s Skeleton. His first full-length book, On Equilibrium of Song, was published by Overpass Books (2011).