Jim Behrle – To the Cigarette Girl


Jim Behrle

To the Cigarette Girl

there are plenty more x’s
inside of me.  streetlights
in parenthesis, italics.
we need more Busters.

what you’ve got: menthol,
taller than me.  I would like
to be an L, I think.  mailbox
with only a little graffiti.

prepared for rebirth,
bloody as that must be.
I cannot be held
I’m quicksilver and

apology, so fast and gone.
refrain: spraypaint and come.
dis-and-mis-connection, circles
of erased colors, colors in a pile.

scrawl where there ought to
be hieroglyphs, sun was to
follow.  wet and dement my
skin with you, expressed

across bone and broken.
I want to be a language
              you can teach me.

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