September 10, 2021 - Rosa Maks’ "Slow Bye” (Chapter 3)

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2

Now Chapter Three, titled I Lean

I lean on your bar and pick hair out of my hard head
When i don’t have any left i’ll wear a hat, your Indian headdress
Why’d you have to say wounded bird in regard to me once
Now i romanticize
I think I have wing
Or something good and exquisite like that
I live with my mama
Who thinks I’m floppy loopy face stuffing
And that my toenails will soon start to curl
Little hag
Leaning on the bar though you only see nice dark thing flow, sleeve uncuff itself to lay
down on skin lit up green
Floral pattern and embroidered lady bugs
See again i spiral into self self self, self soothing, sooth saying
And you have to read my fantastics

Anyway, I was told i was a little like a dead love
Who died
And who had a piece of art made about her
By tearing at a piece of wood with teeth to render a scream on a face
Tearing at a piece of wood with nails and sharp objects to render agony

I saw this wood
I saw it hung

What exists can’t be lied upon because existing is true, barebone and true

The song you said is mine i’m not gonna name
But it had to do with truth
religion why’d you have to play these songs and say they were mine
Or even sweet jane world anthem
You had to croon it when I was working
Remember when everyone could come and smoke inside your house
and i never smelled so sweaty

I invited guys to the bar you never realized
i think you spoke to both of them about the same thing- piano
They’re not allowed anymore, too sacred the stupid sanctuary
You mimed me as flat horizon
Always there at the same time every week
Yes, okay I admit I have the function of a straight line
But I’ll be done and left
Now is the imperative moment in time you’ve started counting down the months and
estimate the number of nights left to be about seventeen
then I move I say and you stay you say
I can see not ever moving at all, avoiding you on the street and wondering who got my
job
And I can see moving and moving and moving
Where’s the teepee you’ve been talking about upstate
Or the treehouse
I was gonna look for you in it when time come to witness your lungs collapse
Do strangers invite strangers to death bed celebrations, birthdays
Do strangers invite strangers they’ve told they loved there?
How can you say I am your sanity, your best part
Do you know that you tell me about our love
Or do you forget six days a week

Your bumbles about love without desire
are just being careful
Careful is dumb

Because our kids would have great teeth
That’s what you said that’s what you said

Even I desire you, ratty
But we don’t tell my friend
my cutie and i are practically engaged by virtue of turquoise ring and the city of Tucson
He knows anyway

You give me money
When the fish aren’t tipping

During the trinket showers I got

mood ring times two
rust ring
Earring pair can’t wear because little do you know some earlobes are too fat for
earrings!
Hole grow closed in matter of months.
Warps back into flesh.

Model of a car in cream model of a car in yellow small drugs old markers feathered
dreamcatcher moleskine sketchbook book book book and book t- shirt pocket knife
incense watercolor bottle solar charger magic rock times so many wolf den rock rose
bunches baby pumpkin

Things to carry lose over a life lived and wronged.

You know the dice I gave you are important and made in heavy metal for a reason and
you put them right away where I predicted you would, the inside pocket, the inner flap.

God you built a whole thing out of a car bumper and you painted it yellow and said I
could use it to paint except I make print I don’t paint
You painted that room yellow and told me to spend a precious hour in it
So many chances to have played with you but I’m paralyzed at jam sessions I don’t
know the keys and you always drop the tuning to the minors and so I abandon my
instrument for months and now it’s too late for me to jam with you- once, you were on
electric fiddle and I was on stupid banjo noodling around, plugged in and it was good
don’t talk about the Gibson I haven’t touched the blue thing
Then we finally did Mikey came and sat down on the cheap electric drums (I should
mention that I also love Mikey and get so boiling stewing when he is fucking around
always always fucking around)
I took your spot on the guitar so you wandered from bass to keyboard to making
babadaba-babadaba noises on the microphone (by this point Mikey does the look my
way, the me and Mikey look that says hey if we could we would)
And we all trickle down
The sound
You go back to entertaining

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Rosa Maks was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is also a printmaker and is currently trying her hand at a degree in print in Tucson, Arizona. She's also a poet, freelance writer and aspiring banjo player; passions include music, creative writing and long distance bike touring. She has worked as a chess teacher, a bike frame sander, a candle maker and gallery assistant, among others. Too mercurial for her own good, she hopes her non-fiction creative writing and true-story poems speak in her place. You might find her at Rockaway Beach in Queens, dragging her bike through a dune or somewhere far from home, picturing that very image with longing.