Anika Basquiat
I stuffed a budding bouquet
in the head hole of your
black turtleneck sweater
you said you’d be off
breakdancing on trash island
only you know where, Pacific Ocean
it’s for science, you said
it’s for a good cause
I hung your replica on a curtain rod
and asked it about
the way a bird tastes
a dove, a pigeon
like chicken, it replied
but not the actual taste of chicken
but the idea of the taste of chicken
and now you’re here
and we’re standing face-to-face
you look at the bouquet
and it begins to explode with color
purple hydrangea, pink peony
I look right into your eyes,
eyes that I have yet to find anything behind
or really anything inside
and I forget that eyes
are not blown from glass
but are made of fleshy goop
soft to the touch vulnerable
and maybe there’s nothing behind
or inside anyone’s eyes
especially yours, maybe
you put on your turtleneck sweater
like you are stuffing yourself
inside a crystal vase.
Super Saiyan 3
A bundle of arrows, quiverless
decorate the inside of your right thigh
above the knee
you let your summer knit dress
resume its usual place in the world.
You tell me what it was like
to walk through walls as a child
how your father spent late nights
whispering proverbs in your left ear
and how you were either too afraid
or too honest to pretend sleep.
We watched fog eat the tops of
cypresses, firs
while the sky bloomed
into mood-ring-blue
roofs began to steam
and then you were gone.
When we see each other again
in traffic on a bridge
that might’ve collapse today or yesterday
I ask you about the tattoo
but you tell me it’s been removed.
Jordan Burgess is an all around okay guy. He studies, works, and lives in Portland, Oregon.