shame

by Peter Schwartz

like a giant inside my little-boy frame
taking up all that heat and oxygen, I can
feel his breath like blue smoke

he speaks in reverberations, taunts my
ideas of elevators and exits by replacing them
with this perfect monolith

the place where there never is traffic
the low point in my closet apex, I send flares
from here in the form

of postcards and footnotes, but they
fizzle pretty quickly, they certainly
aren't birthday candles

and I have very few
wishes left in my little—
boy heart.

--

he feels me like I feel him, two
lovers doing something terrible
in the dark

our irises shape the world into still
darker segments like unopened grapefruits
sitting on the edge of

a breakfasting world I'm not
taking part in, he knows how weak
I am at the right angle

the floods that
come when I have
no season.

--

I don't know what to do
I leave out offerings like mustard
seeds, cherries and blackberries

but these aren't what he wants, he'll hold out
forever for the deathlike intimacy
he needs, I wear its opposite

like a necklace of wasps
around my spidery neck, you might
call it self-pollution

but only because you're part
of the hive; I'm living so far outside
the rosy ring of the every-

day marriages most people collect
that I fear soon I will become so invisible
I'll see only him,

my giant.

Peter Schwartz's poetry has been featured in The Columbia Review, Diagram, and Opium Magazine. When not dreaming of literary conferences he's writing or taking photos or thinking of who he should get for the next issue of DOGZPLOT, where he is art editor. His third chapbook 'ghost diet' will be out at the end of 2009. Learn more about his work at: http://www.sitrahahra.com/