Issue 7, Winter/Spring 2009

Intervals of Please, by Ana Bozicevic

“I want to prove to you
I love you,” I told my
stepfather

after he had worked on me for hours
to sign away an apartment I didn’t yet
inherit,

and which he thought
his two sons should
inherit.

Even he was disgusted.
Here I was, shoehorning
beauty

and patience into a counterfeit-sale of love.
And he was
right.

I learned. When called on to say:
“A bomb’s like a box of stars,” I couldn’t do
it:

couldn’t make bomb
beautiful for
you.

You long to relate? The clouds above
Wall Street
are

the same as those in Giotto,
but is that a
comfort?

When you think of the bomb,
even though you pit your
fear

against it, does it
not give you a hard
on?

Picture a cute
friendly lady
poet:

petite, tall or zaftig, you
pick. Or a hot-when-angry
dyke

if that’s your
thing. She name-drops movements,
trees

and birds: it’s her heart
telling your heart to have a
heart.

She brings up bombs.
BOOM! You have a hard on. I get
it:

it’s sublime to sniff the exploding
butt of her
heart.

My body has also been all
one big hard
on.

Through the war I fondled a picture
of a girl, right in front of that
girl.

Her handshake felt
just like a
handjob.

But when she
stepped on the
mine

her body looked
not cute. Her
leg

soaring through the air
was not cute. Why am I bringing
this

up? It takes a hard
on to detonate a
bomb.

But to diffuse
one takes patience, proof of love. We all
want

to live but then
diffuse. We’re built like
stags

of light but most love
shoes. What
diffuses

us must love us
but can’t want us to
shoehorn

beauty into shoes.
Or just a
leg

or planet. Or
to just
come.

Don’t call her “she.”
I mean, the
bomb.

This poem is meant to be
admonishment. So why am I trying to squeeze beauty into
admonishment.

Maybe I’m tired, want an easy way
out. It’s been
years

since I’ve seen a real live hard
on: but I can picture it
soaring

through the air.
It doesn’t look
cute.

What I mean to say
is I want to prove to you I
love you

like the glow of snowfall
reflected on a
face

or how seventies clothes looked
in the
seventies:

not like new; brand
new. Still it must grow
older

to grow up
proof. Sit like a rabbit on your
haunches.

Listen to the elm
thrush capitalist
light

I mean don’t kill me with
your hard
on

please. I’ll wait for you.