William James

[I’m done trying to make sense]

an excerpt from “Everyone Gets Out of This Alive”

I’m done trying to make sense
of my poems      What is a poem any-
way but a coyote on a high wire,

or a road map with a loose tooth     
The city I live in can’t be mine
because I wasn’t born here     

I’m as guilty of colonization
as any of us      But I love this dirty river
that cuts us in half like a knife,

even when it smells like death      In December,
city workers fill their trucks with overflow
snow and dump it in the Merrimack     

Come spring, the water thrashes about,
all angry and infinite and swollen      I want
to be that kind of volume      A roar so loud,

even the old ghosts of bridges disappear     
I want to speak a language the entire world
knows how to swallow      Tell me the center

of the earth is warmer than the surface,
I’ll tell you that we are all born howling
just trying to figure out the shape of our lungs     

Dear friends,           forgive me
when I sound overloaded with worry,
like a spring river in a city that isn’t mine     

Sometimes my heart feels too big
for my body so I try to throw it away     
Or give it away      Sometimes my hands

rumble like six thousand horses     
I don’t know if I’m ready to be done
trying to find god      When I say I love you,

what I mean is today my world exploded
into a million shards of granite and there you were,
beaming      There you were refracting the sun

into a perfect star      When I say I love you
what I mean is the air in this city
that isn’t mine burns my throat     

It moshpits my chest      It earthquakes me
into pieces until I cough up so much boiling
blood, until I shake up all this reckless dust,

but you will always
make me want to breathe.

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William James is a writer currently existing in the Queen City of Manchester, NH. He was born, once, and has been surviving ever since. You can find him online at http://williamjamespoetry.com or on Twitter (@whoisthebilljim)