Paperweight Poetry

My first metro card, was my first ticket to any other place, but here; a rite of passage on a sticky subway brimming with swaying bodies  of all different colors and places, some were lonely, I could tell, and others were in love with people or with the world, and I was the latter. My first passport, was my first ticket to the world, and I went any other place, but here; an initiation rite on a plane  brimming with buckled bodies of all different colors and places, some were lonely,  I could tell, and others were in love with people or with the world, and I was the latter. My first space helmet, was my first ticket to the universe, and I went any other place, but here; a wormhole on a ship  brimming with untethered stars of all different colors and places, some were lonely; I could tell, and others were in love with other stars or with the world, and I was the latter.  My first tickets to life, were pressed and stamped and named 

How different i know you would act, if you saw how they lined my chest with yellow tape  after you left it, how they outlined my remains with child’s chalk, the kind i used to draw horses with, pink, and blue, and purple across the pavement, because i was too pure and too young to be told horses couldn’t be that color, but you were the rain, that came down like punches and slanted eyes, and swirled it like cotton candy, so that I thought you were good, until it turned to red and I realized it was my blood. Maybe you would act different if you saw the crime scene, if you saw a documentarist cock his head at the strangely terrifying and beautiful way, that blood clouded around the back of my head on the sidewalk, where I used to draw my horses, like a thought bubble in a comic strip, as if I had something to say.  Maybe if you saw the way that they pour water over the blood, until it turned pink, like a smeared chalk horse caught in the rain, th

Sometimes songs come from other places than church pews and they are low and swallowed like wine or they are loud and impenetrable like the way life should be, and I think God is okay with that too. I think the music is more than  the recording studio where harmony and melody make love, for I can hear it in the trees, in the small unprecedented way that they shelter me from the rain, and it is not only in split branches, but in the sound of grain pouring out, the slick sweat between bodies,  the moss I scrape off the rocks, there is music inside of smiles and laughter, and children popping bubble wrap, the juice running down a chin from a peach.  I hear music without melodies, songs without harmonies, and they are everywhere  and they are good.  They are in the littered plastic bags dancing like ballerinas in the wind, the knot of a wet shoelace tightened, the late afternoon sleeper’s exhale,  and I hear it in you, in your breaths that pul

This is a poem called Innocence and it goes like this: ? -anna sluder

You ask me what I want, but you cannot buy me rainy days. You cannot buy me moments like old photographs that you can feel turning into memories, like reluctant religion as they occur. You can buy me rain boots and a camera and even a song, but you cannot buy me the wind as it goes through my hair as the sun flirts with the horizon, and as the car radio cries; so put your wallet away damn it, and put your arms around me. -anna sluder

There is this looming figure over me perhaps it’s just my shadow, but I’m too afraid to turn around and look.  And I’m just this thing, that was born as a loose wet sac of skin that in order to become a person, has to be filled up with other things, small stories told in small voices  and alcoholic dreams at the edge of a cliff and a howl.  But I didn’t know this or I would’ve plucked and chose what I wanted to be filled with, like a wine selection for dessert.  So I became this pale lump of things I didn’t want to see, let alone be;  and so the world tasted like salty sweat and bruises, and I had to make do without my peripheral vision, just the only straight things I had to bear, which all started and ended with pain. And I had to find a way to make them right, make them good, make what I had become beautiful again, if only I could turn my head.  -anna sluder