Three Poems: Jess del Balzo

Brooklyn Cracks Down

The young man looks both ways, whistling to himself as he prepares to cross the street. It is one of the first days of a spring that has been too long coming.

The officer watches—eyes narrowed, hungry—and waits.

And then, as the soles of his prey’s shoes touch the concrete in front of him, he says, “Son.”

“Yes sir?”

“What’s that, there—in your pocket?”

“What’s what, sir?”

“You wouldn’t be hiding anything, would you? Anything illegal?”

“Um, no sir.”

“So what’s that bulge in your coat pocket there?”

The young man slowly produces a book of poems. He looks at the ground.

Rimbaud. The officer shakes his head as he walks away. It’s always fucking Rimbaud.

*

Trouble was,

he knew what he had

and could not hold onto.

It was written there

in the orange moon and

its shadow-boxes of light

across the hillside

train tracks.

Years later, I would

wake up in the night and

throw away the clothes

that still smelled like

the back of the car

and that couch at that

friend’s house we went to

after, where I pretended

to be asleep just so

I wouldn’t have to talk

to him or anyone with a mind

to tell me what I should or

should not be doing

with the unowned mystery

of my sex,

the wild territory between

the legs, never mind

the heart.

Trouble is as trouble has been

taught to do. Some of us are born

willing and hungry to learn

the wrong things about

the late blood, the angry landscape,

the chorus of bipolar

electric light lovers.

Even at seventeen, I wondered

how I could ever prepare

a child for this world,

what anyone could possibly say

to explain the quiet

cruelty of experience, the way

some of us lay down

and fold our hands.

*

Regards

We say we try when we know we cannot do. If only it were easy to communicate the difference. Maybe then we would not need to resort to finger-painting lies down each other’s limbs in the dark. To think of the well-wishing lines I drew down the length of well-meaning arms and legs cuts cold and deep to the pit of my stomach.

There is nothing that hurts like the moment someone looks at you—happy—and you feel like you’re fresh out of batteries. I wish I’d understood in the shallow hours of careless that you cannot build a room for affection in your heart if there is not enough space. The wall has to go somewhere.

I come across regret whenever I clean the dusty shreds of dreams that slip through the crack between the bed and the wall. There are things I try to keep close, but even the knife under the pillow falls unreachable once in a while.

There is nothing I am waiting up for. I am not asking to be found. I just wish there was someone who could tell me what will and will not have to be swept up later.

When we become what we are, it is impossible to explain how. I could have tried, but the sharp blinking would have given me away. For all the disappearing acts I pulled, the lack of pointless loyalty, I thought you might want to know: the lights flicker every time I think of you.