Nina Puro
Room Lit By a Bullet & A Photograph of a Pony
What you did to me was a bullet, but now I’ve drilled a hole through it
& wear it around my neck. And sure you’ve a key─I’ve seen it─
but it is a cheap one from the mall like every other girl has
with the plating wearing off to brass. It doesn't open any locks.
In this Western, I ride bareback. Once I peed in the holy water &
saw graves yawn open to flowers. When daddy told me to drown kittens I did
& I didn’t feel bad. Today, I’m double-fisting anything I can &
waiting for the river to become a cracked riverbed I can walk along
towards the scaffold I’m waiting to finish being built.
There is solitude in the long furrows of dirt in fields
& in standing at the front of a crowded train looking down the tunnel,
a question about loneliness in the long barrels of cold pistols.
In a cold shovelful of dirt hitting wood lined with satin, slow,
the way a balloon sinks slower in a dirty room. An answer
to the question in using favorite forks & breaking favorite plates
& in skin picked from nails, in lightning bugs trapped in jars.
What you were: a photograph of a horse to someone
who’s never been on a horse. What I am: hordes of children riding bareback
off cliffs with satin ribbons in their hair & the horses’ manes,
the satin trailing up to form a picture that shows where they’re going next.
I had the same dream seventeen times in a row & I had it because I slept alone.
Solitude in lipstick: a weapon by the bed brightening
as the cigarettes in the ashtray & the bugs wink
out; solitude as the long black car arrives & the door clicks shut
with the sound of vocal cords being cut. There’s the end of
solitude in the mirror on the ceiling. In the knock. In waking up
thirsty & drinking cold water. Falling back asleep
to have the dream an eighteenth time, only this time all the faces are blurs
but I know who everyone is. I know that this time we are all dead.
Every person’s voice is still ice clinking in a glass, but now
everything costs 5.99, which is almost a dollar more than I have.
We depart, we depart, we go new places─but there is still dust in our hair
& not enough air in our lungs to blow the sinking balloon back up.
I couldn’t taste the metal in your key because of the glue on my tongue.
If you chew gum while you dissect cadavers, it’ll taste like formaldehyde.
I can taste my own death in stamps & almonds & if I spit the bitterness
into the trashcan, I won’t absorb it, but if I hold it on my tongue long enough,
it will turn sweet. I’ve been places downriver you aren’t allowed
to have shoelaces or listen to music or be alone & someone
sits in a chair & watches you sleep. When you sleep, sometimes you move
through the dark. Sometimes the dark moves through you. Sometimes
the dark asks questions; sometimes it shoots.
Nina Puro’s work is forthcoming or recently appeared in Third Coast, Pleiades, Cream City Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Bodega Magazine, Jellyfish Magazine, and other publications. The recipient of an MFA from Syracuse University, she lives in Brooklyn, works in publishing for Persea Books and George Braziller Inc. and is bad at thinking of clever third-person quips to put in places like this.
Return to May 2014 Edition
What you did to me was a bullet, but now I’ve drilled a hole through it
& wear it around my neck. And sure you’ve a key─I’ve seen it─
but it is a cheap one from the mall like every other girl has
with the plating wearing off to brass. It doesn't open any locks.
In this Western, I ride bareback. Once I peed in the holy water &
saw graves yawn open to flowers. When daddy told me to drown kittens I did
& I didn’t feel bad. Today, I’m double-fisting anything I can &
waiting for the river to become a cracked riverbed I can walk along
towards the scaffold I’m waiting to finish being built.
There is solitude in the long furrows of dirt in fields
& in standing at the front of a crowded train looking down the tunnel,
a question about loneliness in the long barrels of cold pistols.
In a cold shovelful of dirt hitting wood lined with satin, slow,
the way a balloon sinks slower in a dirty room. An answer
to the question in using favorite forks & breaking favorite plates
& in skin picked from nails, in lightning bugs trapped in jars.
What you were: a photograph of a horse to someone
who’s never been on a horse. What I am: hordes of children riding bareback
off cliffs with satin ribbons in their hair & the horses’ manes,
the satin trailing up to form a picture that shows where they’re going next.
I had the same dream seventeen times in a row & I had it because I slept alone.
Solitude in lipstick: a weapon by the bed brightening
as the cigarettes in the ashtray & the bugs wink
out; solitude as the long black car arrives & the door clicks shut
with the sound of vocal cords being cut. There’s the end of
solitude in the mirror on the ceiling. In the knock. In waking up
thirsty & drinking cold water. Falling back asleep
to have the dream an eighteenth time, only this time all the faces are blurs
but I know who everyone is. I know that this time we are all dead.
Every person’s voice is still ice clinking in a glass, but now
everything costs 5.99, which is almost a dollar more than I have.
We depart, we depart, we go new places─but there is still dust in our hair
& not enough air in our lungs to blow the sinking balloon back up.
I couldn’t taste the metal in your key because of the glue on my tongue.
If you chew gum while you dissect cadavers, it’ll taste like formaldehyde.
I can taste my own death in stamps & almonds & if I spit the bitterness
into the trashcan, I won’t absorb it, but if I hold it on my tongue long enough,
it will turn sweet. I’ve been places downriver you aren’t allowed
to have shoelaces or listen to music or be alone & someone
sits in a chair & watches you sleep. When you sleep, sometimes you move
through the dark. Sometimes the dark moves through you. Sometimes
the dark asks questions; sometimes it shoots.
Nina Puro’s work is forthcoming or recently appeared in Third Coast, Pleiades, Cream City Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Bodega Magazine, Jellyfish Magazine, and other publications. The recipient of an MFA from Syracuse University, she lives in Brooklyn, works in publishing for Persea Books and George Braziller Inc. and is bad at thinking of clever third-person quips to put in places like this.
Return to May 2014 Edition