So I told them, I don’t care if you smack me. Anyway, we are both just the smack.
THE HIGH OF A NEW THEORUM
There was this new baby born on my floor, across the hall. She was very quiet. She didn’t cry much at all. Just looked. She looked at everything as if she could put it in her mouth, suck on it to distinguish the shape of the soul.
That was you, Olga.
You glimpsed at me and I glimpsed at you. It wasn’t a glimpse. You were teething on me with your dark eyes. You were tasting my soul.
Well, what did it taste like?
MIKHAIL LERMONTOV
Poet and painter. His verses just stick. Like oil colors that bring waves to the edges of the canvas.
MY FAVORITE POEM
It was that one everyone had to learn in school. The other kids mocked its verses. A stupid sailboat chooses to go into a storm when it could have stayed put, what a dumbass.
But the poem told deep things to my heart. I couldn’t hide it. The others saw. They mocked me for liking the poem so much. For reciting it to myself under my breath.
A LONE SAILBOAT
I recited it before sleep.
I recited it when I made my body into a zodiac.
I recited it in prison.
ONE-TWO
Time erases people. Four walls. I forgot about everyone and maybe they forgot about me.
ONE-TWO
My ma passed away. Years increased. I’m not sure I spent them on earth. I didn’t age the right way.
ONE-TWO
I became an afternoon with no crest into evening.
I became another wall that kept myself in.
I didn’t care about anyone or anything.
THRICE
But then a great pain came to me. My stomach was vexed. Clouds filled the holes of my seeing.
THE STRANGER
She gave me one call to make.
AMERICA
I was outside, pacing around a streetlamp. Round and round. My shadow grew big and small. The phone rang and rang.
You weren’t picking up.
TEUTONIA AVENUE
I took the stairway, up six flights and pushed the heavy door. I walked up the hallway. My stomach was growling, because I was starving.
I heard it over the growling. Your voice. Through the wall.
FIRE AND ICE
It’s memory’s sweat.
BAD BOY
What was I supposed to tell the militzioner?
That mathematics made me do it? That mathematics came to me and that the numbers braided themselves so beautifully and I just climbed the long lock of hair up, up, up to floor six?
IN EVERY DREAM NOW I’M CLIMBING THAT BRAID
It’s ringing and ringing, but you won’t pick up.
MY HEAD IS DRAINING
There. He’s panting at my feet. Vaska. All muddy colors and sticky hair.
VASKA
He’s bowing his nose. He’s poking at my ankles. I’m ashamed.
VASKA!
Hefty, true.
He knows what I’ve done.
He knows what I’m about to do.
He knows what I keep doing.
NICKY?
Then you finally pick up.
TANYA, ALONE IN HER CELL
AND THE LORD SAID UNTO JOHN, COME FORTH AND YOU WILL RECEIVE ETERNAL LIFE
“But unfortunately, John came fifth…”
I PUNCH THE WALL
And laugh and laugh and laugh.
BECAUSE I LIKE PUNCHING AND LAUGHING
It makes me wet.
NOSTALGIA
Teenage night pimpled with stars.
SVETLANA
Teenage cunt stuffed with longing.
BESTIES
Sveta and I. We were at the mall. We had both just stolen some new bras from Victoria’s Secret. We were on our way to the food court, cause Sveta wanted a fucking Cinnabon, even though she fucking knew that I was watching my figure. But what Sveta wants, Sveta gets.
As usual, I’m horny for no reason. As usual, I feel so ugly I can barely string my words together. As usual, I’m trying to be charming as fuck every other sentence, but as usual Sveta’s attention is elsewhere.
WE GO WAY BACK, SVETA AND I
She’s my bestie since elementary school.
HOW IT IS
Sometimes she makes me so wet. Sometimes my math homework makes me so wet. Sometimes the fucking sun rising on a new fucking day makes me so wet. What’s a teenage cunt to do?
I’M A VIRGIN
I want to fuck morning, noon, and night.
SO WHAT
I want to fuck all the handles on all the doors.
JUST THERE
I love having my hand in my pants. Just to touch it.
RUMORS
I’m barely thirteen and some of the fucking fuckheads in our class sense that I’m horny and they make eyes at me. They pass me notes. They ask me to suck them off. To fuck them good. To sex them up. Whatever. Svetlana tells me people say I’m a gross hoe. I ask her if she wants to go down on me. She says, Ew, no! I jump on her and pin her hands to the floor. She says, Stop it, cut it out. I let go and say, Relax, Sveta, I’m not gonna fucking rape you. She laughs and pushes me off her and says, You’re such a bitch, with her inching smile.
That night I masturbate to raping her.
FUCKHEADS OF HER DREAMS
There are always boys. We’re fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen… And there are always boys.
CUTE BOYS
Sveta says, Hey, look over there. You see them? Who? Them. Who. The cute boys, duh. You gotta be fucking kidding me. Sveta with her sweet tits. Always looking for cute boys. Stocking up on cute boys as if we were in famine. Sveta likes all her cute boys. Here’s the twist. Most of them aren’t even cute. Like really not cute. She likes cute boys like strays like broken noses, like sadists like psychos, like scabs like sad hearts and sad dicks, it makes her feel like she’s got a purpose in life. WHY DO WE ALL HAVE TO HAVE A FUCKING PURPOSE IN LIFE? The primordial lie.
She’s pointing at them and smiling. She’s so fucking obvious. Eating her gooey Cinnabon like a fucking bimbo. Of course, the two boys are looking at us now. They got mean eyes, those ones. I tell Sveta so. I say, Come on, Sveta, those two got mean eyes.
