Poems by Sean Juarez

To, a Fox:

It’s all glass, you see;

We roll around in our dens while the lukewarm sunlight pierces right through our window to the next

Flooding floor after floor ‘til he melts the highways and parking lots back to tar, and

Alloys that will never be solid again.

The grass is burnt to a crisp, but for now you can lay in it.

I don’t expect you to understand.

I should give my heart a break.

I’m jelly after counting concrete and I’ve not yet trained myself to withstand it but maybe one day.

I just need so much stimulation, or maybe numbness: Mud, air, and other combustibles that make

us geysers of sleep and incontinence.

You are uninhibited until the great metal insects come your way and you scurry off the tar, off

the Concrete, to a familiar place that’s… good enough.

I don’t expect you to understand.

There’s a fire surrounding us both that maybe you can’t see, but I do, right now, and it’s smoking

my eyes dry.

You got scared and then I got scared and we both yawn scurrying for a place to claim home,

And I’m happy to tell you I’ve claimed it!

Conversing with stones and sand as they sing back to me never felt so full of life as it does when

I’m alone.

I like to look out the window now, just staring, just like you–

At least, I think just like you, if I know anything about you.

You were alone too, yawning, I yawn too, yawning lust, excitation and putrefaction,

Sleeping comfortably in the cold for the first time, I think, ever.

It is getting cold soon.

You’ll have to find a home in strides of frostbite, frosted flames tickling your nose,

But you’ll do it in icy-eyed, wondrous monotony;

Like all the yesterdays spent in black winds and salty asphalt.

I don’t understand.

Untitled

I was a plane crash last Friday and as my 

Fuselage plummeted to the ground all the 

Twinkling white passengers fled in zig-zag 

Formation out of my arms and legs leaving 

Me shaking, then numb.

Under the cabinet my head found rest as 

Three blue angels sang to me in aqueous

Harmony until I needed to throw up again.

Away with my brief comfort and into

a makeshift vomit bucket clobbered together with a trash bag and an empty hard seltzer box and

my face is covered in sushi and my eyes are stinging with stomach acid but in that box i waited

for you because you were there last time but tonight you were in the living room asking for the

wifi password and i’m burning alive in the kitchen. then the light was so bright in my eyes and i

didn’t even care and the lights were gone and the noise was gone and you were still in the living

room and i’m killing myself in the kitchen and they touch me and rub my head i’m talking about

chemistry i’m not dying but i’m killing myself waiting for a word from you and maybe an arm

around the shoulder if i’m lucky but the last thing you said was “he’s taking it in the back in the

kitchen.”

“f*ck you, you’re not even here.” but the mess in the box just bubbles a little.

“f*ck you, you’re not even here” until i can drag myself out of the kitchen and into the living

room where your arms are my arms and the left is on the right until i can fall asleep and not

realize it until the lights are back.