#lea graham

[lucybiederman]

Crush 9W: A Fable                                   by Lea Graham

Once there was a silver hearse with a black

steer mounted on top that her ex-mother-in-law

drove, delivering Frank's Steakhouse

along 9W's decolletage & ditching family

pets to mountainsides, gullies:

two gerbils, four cats, a pot-bellied pig.

To that end, her ex stole himself to Syracuse,

Buffalo, Boston, further each time,

abandoned sidewalk railings, assorted

shelving, low ceilings & tenants,

their chickens, rheumatic children,

the gasping bedbugs of Brooklyn.

[bibliomancyoracle]

say whatever

you do behind

your velvet

Elvis is

your own biz

  *

  from "A Crush for Jeanne" by Lea Graham

[nahhhlina]

A Crush in Dream Time | Lea Graham

You know you should say fruta bomba but whisper papaya because it’s nasty, & laughing, you’re out the door walking along rain & mystery, repeating Teaching! Schedule! over city grates twisted, rusted— Where, where’s the ardor? Why this rush & rigor, this cumulo-nimbus, this quandary elsewhere? Shouldn’t liaisons appear in rooms with balconies & languor? Why not Pedro with his bright teeth, open collar, cupping history lessons to an ear— Who knows what will expire in an hour, who knows if there was a window or if it was flocked in neighbors that night, gathered in blackouts, one generator, telenovela’s reruns— Were sherry glasses laid out like a sickle? An electric life-sized saint? Was a small child in red panties outside your door whispering what’s this what’s this?

-

This, this, this. This book. I can't stop coming back to it.

[nahhhlina]

A Crush in the Cruelest Month | Lea Graham

It's not easy coming back from the dead each year to lilac’s febrile pull, a wild push of styptic plum & dogwood’s blood-plashed petals—a press to mull: blemish, passion; the language shoves, our shoulders put to: door, cellar door, cellar door—can you hear it? The most beautiful sounds mysterious fidelity to our ears, we linger: in linguals, to dentals, what gutturals tunnel this radix of time & place: that radish or wool, turniped but heaving the blue, roots singing their long, twisted song the way it goes