Yours truly,
If only my tongue were context then my teeth would be meaning and when I opened my mouth
to eat I would find a story there each time.
The one of the blue boy whose mother fed all the out-of-work-actors in the neighborhood but
never fed him. AND SO: he turned blue as a way to get attention, which I suppose worked
because I’m writing to you about him.
Your country is an odd shape. I’ve seen it in maps.
They make the beer stronger. AND SO: the men are more aggressive
(leaving the faucet on after filling the sink with tissue).
In the airing closet are two boys. One is eleven; the other is afraid of
small places and most likely begins to cry.
I went to Los Angeles. This weekend was the first one of the war.
In your country, they take children,
move to Toledo, then return to your country and move
children again.
The children notice the movement but are willing to go when
they are paid
and if they have pet dogs their dogs lose their barks so they
don’t complain either.
My father says one reason he left is because if he’d stayed he would have married and had children. Turns out, he did that anyway, but in a different place.
I remember that you are from LA and as I sit in front of the television images of guns and night explosions flash across the screen.
The eleven-year-old is tall but still manages to wrap his body around the crying boy.
I wonder if my poems will marry and have children the way yours have?
I wonder what would have happened if we never began to imitate our fears.
Christine Moore (@writemoore) holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pasadena Review; 26: C A Journal of Poetry and Poetics; Pinhole Poetry and The Inflectionist Review.