Poem

The First Straw



I used to think love was two people sucking
on the same straw to see whose thirst was stronger,

but then I whiffed the crushed walnuts of your nape,
traced jackals in the snow-covered tombstones of your teeth.

I used to think love was a non-stop saxophone solo
in the lungs, till I hung with you like a pair of sneakers

from a phone line, and you promised to always smell
the rose in my kerosene. I used to think love was terminal

pelvic ballet, till you let me jog beside while you pedaled
all over hell on the menstrual bicycle, your tongue


ripping through my prairie like a tornado of paper cuts.
I used to think love was an old man smashing a mirror


over his knee, till you helped me carry the barbell
of my spirit back up the stairs after my car pirouetted

in the desert. You are my history book. I used to not believe
in fairy tales till I played the dunce in sheep's clothing

and felt how perfectly your foot fit in the glass slipper
of my ass. But then duty wrapped its phone cord

around my ankle and yanked me across the continent.
And now there are three thousand miles between the u

and s in esophagus. And being without you is like standing
at a cement-filled wall with a roll of Yugoslavian nickels

and making a wish. Some days I miss you so much
I'd jump off the roof of your office building

just to catch a glimpse of you on the way down. I wish
we could trade left eyeballs, so we could always see

what the other sees. But you're here, I'm there,
and we have only words, a nightly phone call - one chance

to mix feelings into syllables and pour into the receiver,
hope they don't disassemble in that calculus of wire.

And lately - with this whole war thing - the language machine
supporting it - I feel betrayed by the alphabet, like they're


injecting strychnine into my vowels, infecting my consonants,
naming attack helicopters after shattered Indian tribes:

Apache, Blackhawk; and West Bank colonizers are settlers,
so Sharon is Davey Crockett, and Arafat: Geronimo,


and it's the Wild West all over again. And I imagine Picasso
looking in a mirror, decorating his face in war paint,

washing his brushes in venom. And I think of Jenin
in all that rubble, and I feel like a Cyclops with two eyes,

like an anorexic with three mouths, like a scuba diver
in quicksand, like a shark with plastic vampire teeth,

like I'm the executioner's fingernail trying to reason
with the hand. And I don't know how to speak love

when the heart is a busted cup filling with spit and paste,
and the only sexual fantasy I have is busting

into the Pentagon with a bazooka-sized pen and blowing
open the minds of generals. And I comfort myself


with the thought that we'll name our first child Jenin,
and her middle name will be Terezin, and we'll teach her

how to glow in the dark, and how to swallow firecrackers,
and to never neglect the first straw; because no one


ever talks about the first straw, it's always the last straw
that gets all the attention, but by then it's way too late.


- Jeffrey McDaniel

Mkay so my first post.. like ever lol. I guess I'll start by saying my name is Lindsey, and I created this blog for my Creative Writing class. I'm pretty excited to be in creative writing, it's the class where I get to read and blog and go on the computer and chill beside Spence for an entire hour every day. Spence is pretty cool, he's one of those people that I've just known my whole life. In grade 4 we were in the same class, Ms. Chuchmuch's class, and we always wrote cool stories together, painted, drew and read.. Man that was an awesome class! I feel like this one is going to be the grade 12 version of it :P. It's kinda funny how life works out like that hey? The people who were with you for some things are with you for others too. I've started to notice things like that lately, trying to open my eyes up to the world a little, you know? There's a lot going on out there, sometimes its nice to take a step back and see it.