Snow Moon

New Orleans is a shipwreck masquerading as a city

it hovers, horizon of worn time

i would lay down in fields of warm settings & if the moon

says i need you, cresting the rooftops of abandon 

where we travel to be able to breathe & below sea level still

high enough up & you can see the whole bend in the river

ghost barges stirring up February fog round the edges of their cut paths

call & response from the next roof over, we’re all out here leaving 

something behind, write my name on it for a lifetime, for this life 

folded into you, the way some of us get left out of the picture 

crosses the choice that some of us leave on our own if love

isn’t what you think it is: You’ll never be as free as when 

you let go of all you think you’ve learned here

asphalt shingles held us to a gripping, if you want to be inside me

under that full moon, we need to be high enough 

that i can see my city, the way i tied my life to her

the way i could come up under her, a rushing of water

is where my life spooled out, a rushing of wanting to feel everything 

there are types of desire that undo you, then there are types of wanting 

that carry you far enough to find them— some of us live in the interstices 

knowing all of this is temporary, steal what you can carry  

plunder the rest 

Stand Closer

 

i bet this place is a bone silent whistling 

under stars, the vowels of time, a constant 

we made it this far but not very far from where we started

from up there, the horizon is a tone less 

like i sd, we’re going the wrong way driving away from it

every poem is a trying to steal, i let you wheel 

turned up, i ask what i can of you

if i show you this childhood, what does it seem 

neighborhood drowned but my memory sharps against 

i was hungry so long in this life 

held inside, does love become a burden 

blunt mouthed to stop speech, the corners of this living

fold down, i do and do not see you clearly 

when you say i know more people who’ve died 

who wins that standing, there were more photographs 

than hours and more ways to never say what we mean 

if we could just stay driving and never arrive, if we could 

umbrella softest bits, struck match tip, it was this need inside 

me to choose burning over ever just making it home 

Day 30: 30 Days of Weezy for National Poetry Month

Photo by Gina Myers

(Collaboration with Megan Burns and Gina Myers, Atlanta)



"chest...caved in, mess on the pavement"
-Lil Wayne

Dear Weezy:

outlined this blue, a world of debt accrued
turning every day into something worthy
& new, blacklisted I bite down on
a slipping beat. Chew on that [for
a bit] ashy-mouth shapes form a gesture
in thrown shades.
My shadow tattooed to the sidewalk
iced or blown, a specific song for any
outlands, a specific object for best
intentions, like a chasing--
blazed down a path, a satellite
of pretensions, an art of mistakes
and the mistaken, rapt gaze caught
on the link joining the last hook to the break.
[Take it all down.] Restart the tape
till shuttering a slammed down solution gutters
down the page. This the new sound,
the future splintered, it's grappling a precise
measure tamped down to its tight lip.

Love,
Megan Burns & Gina Myers