6 Poems

Algona

the wedding is at the house
I’d drive to after track practice,
the house she grew up in,
where we’d play Beetle Adventure Racing

the first time I went
to Sarah’s house, I’d never taken that left
in front of the SuperMall before,
I didn’t know there was a town there,
that I imagine exists as a self-sustained world
built just for you, with a Dairy Queen
and library

those summer nights we’d go to the park
across the street from Robyn’s house
and push each other on the tire swing

and after things changed,
I was still friends with your sister
I would swoop her in my truck
and I would see you standing
and watching

7-Eleven Part 2

I walked to the 7-Eleven
on the intersection of M and 8th Street,
the one we’d go to after Monday track practice,
the one across the street from Teriyaki Wok,
where we drank Slurpees in the bed of my truck

7-Eleven is now a boulangerie
with floor to ceiling windows on a boulevard,
watching bakers as they enter,
I’m drinking banana flavored coffee

I see nouveau riche in front of over-flowing
trash cans eating foie gras and burger dogs,
and the parks down the street, called Scootie Brown
and Indian Tom, changed their names
to Jamison Square and Tanner Springs

Secoma Lanes

I’m imagining taking the drive
to Pullman tomorrow instead,
through the Cascades and Columbia,
and the corn flowers blooming,
and the green glow of a car dashboard
in a rural college town

I used a hookah for the first time in Pullman
at a place called Munchy’z. I was 18,
in town for ‘Imagine Tomorrow’,
an alternative energy science fair

I watched 6 hours of Intervention today
it made me feel things
that I’m not sure how to identify—
I don’t know if I felt an amalgam of feelings
or if I felt something that people don’t feel
often enough to have named yet

I watched a video on youtube about
humans ceasing to exist
they said whole neighborhoods
would be up in smoke as soon as lightning struck

Seattle Aquarium

Oliver is visiting from Australia
I meet him and Zac at Alleyway
I ask Oliver what Perth is like
because I’m thinking about Susanna,
and wondering if she still lives in Perth,
or if she moved back to her small city in Japan

Oliver tells me about the difference
between Melbourne and Sydney until
I feel interested in Australia—
not for a previous lack of interest,
I just already think so much
about so many places

I mention a memory from senior prom:
we went to Chase’s—a split level house,
with meat rotting on the dining room table
and yellow cigarette tar on the walls

we smoked Backwoods inside,
Chase was stoned and Kirk played
Beach House over the speakers,
and Chase said ‘this music scares me’

Earlier that night, prom was at the Seattle Aquarium,
and after eating too much fondue,
I went to a concrete observation deck,
looked up at downtown Seattle.
the world seemed lonely and big

I go to Zac’s to sleep on his couch
because I missed the last bus home

after prom, as the sun came up,
everyone went to bed on Chase’s basement floor
I drove my mom’s minivan home
across Auburn, so she could use it that morning

earlier on prom night, Isaiah stopped by Chase’s
his tie was loosened and his collar undone
‘I had the best sex of my life in the car’, he said
I think he conceived his firstborn that night

christmas lights

I want to watch Dragon Ball Z with you
you’re in Washington with me
but you’re in Seattle and I’m in Auburn
you’re in a motel and I’m on Kirk’s back patio
and I don’t know even if you like Dragon Ball Z

spaces feel different when the spaces
are related to other space in a new way
like when I stopped by 7-Eleven
on the way home from working
at the carnival, I saw it as an island
in darkness and I didn’t know
Dairy Queen was across the street

but then I learned that behind that Dairy Queen
is what would become your house
and that 7-Eleven became part of the fabric
of something much bigger

I imagine you went to a Chinese garden,
I see you behind a tea house and pond
you are standing perfect and perfectly still,

I want to see you under
the Christmas lights above my bed,
that make your stomach skin look blue—
every color of light is within those Christmas lights,
so why does your skin only reflect blue?

hot tub

I remember at one of Jack’s big house parties,
not long before college,
I crawled into the hot tub in my underwear
four people joined me, including
Dwight and Danielle—they were dating at the time
we talked about the future and high school

we climbed on to the trampoline
and we laid flat on our backs
in the young, breezy, summer,
night air like a heated swimming pool

Kirk played his guitar laying down
we looked at space,
and talked to each other without
ever looking away from that canopy
that looked like negative exposures
of a stucco ceiling, and the whole time
you kept chain smoking on the back porch