Emily Brungo
The Geographical Anatomy of the Creation and the Destruction of a Romance
I. Shadyside
Angostura bitters and sweet vermouth.
Too much unbalance the Manhattans,
the Manhattans unbalance me
placing a hand on your hand,
my hand pulling away each time you touch me
I long for your warmth but at the same time
I snap back defeated, despondent,
dying to recapture a desire to make love but can’t
make myself
make
the first move.II. South Side
Records pinwheel on turntables,
I dance on tables showing leg, peek-a-boo,
kissing by the men’s room
your hand sneaking up my skirt,
skirt around the landmines,
I’ve become an adept showgirl,
tap dancing between your broken pieces,
I perform the funeral song for the person that you want but can’t be
I know
I want you
you want something other.III. Robinson Township
We’re drunk on Beam and champagne in a Microtel
telling each other we’ll come back to each other
like magnets or boomerangs,
we drive through the drive through at Steak n’ Shake
shake the Magic 8 ball
ask it all the thorny questions you can’t ask me
cause my replies are hazy
and I’d play again but can’t
tell you
I better not
tell you now.IV. Oak Ridge
We quietly lay in your childhood bedroom,
these rooms that bred your dreams and idealized notions
the notion of a halcyon me left in a mirrored closet in New Jersey
butterscotch Schnapps on my thighs, your tongue,
your tongue now in comprehensible to yourself
muddled Italian and Spanish
neither your native language
I’ve tried but I can’t
talk like you
talk or interpret
your English.V. Greenwood Heights
In an apartment with weeping walls and buckled floors,
the sky smells sweet like donut and garbage,
the city chockablock with opportunity for those who want a try
I try again but I just complicate,
my come-ons fall to deaf ears, numb hands, slumbering eyes,
one sleeping and the other awake—I love you but can’t
this night
each night
after next.VI. Bloomfield
Too warm for a January night,
this calm for tells the storm
Don’t let’s ask for the moon we have the stars, Bette Davis said,
All I wanted was a man of my own, a child of my own, a home of my own,
my home’s become broken, you’re a stranger
I’ve become shrill, I’m a splinter
I’m not like a wife, amiable and serene
I’d force you to hold me in my fitful sleep, but can’t
separate you from
separate bedrooms.