Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Love Notes, by Thalia Patrinos

The rain hit the roof like tiny silver buttons, spilling into ripples all across the yard. We raised our heads and our eyes molded into the crater of a sky, the threads of water shooting straight into us as we tried to count the clouds. We were no longer in some paved backyard in small-town suburbia, we were no longer kids with school in the morning, we were no longer newspaper-reading, traffic-light-obeying, pulse-dropping mindless members of humanity; we were ghosts of ourselves, tied to the earth, dead flesh brought to life.

Sloth, by Thalia Patrinos

I’ll be waiting for when the night-time crowds diminish

Into glittering shadows, after the masqueraders carouse past three

Watch them dance their night and paychecks away

Pining for pandemonium, aching to ingest a riot

I’ll wait for them to be done with their beers and bar sluts


When they all crawl home, all the nighttime crowds

All the women who have done what counts as cheating now

The criminals, the career engineers, all the bipolar bad girls

Everyone between picture-perfect and neglected-nude

When they crawl home I’ll be waiting in their beds