Here’s our March installment of “Bushwick Bohemia Beat Poetry” curated by Bushwick-born poet, Emanuel Xavier. The series features poems by local Bushwick residents and/or natives. This month’s poem comes from Cait Eggers.
Interruptions
I can’t cum tonight; I’m too dry.
I was in the mood, and it’s usually never a problem.
Instead I begin to cry, giving up on
touching myself to looping images online –
a google search: “lesbian sex gifs” –
and to the most sensational memories of you and I:
Mouth ajar, and your teeth stand out to me as perfect in moonlight
It’s funny to notice the little things
While all senses are kinetic and overwhelmed in the best way.
Your eyes are closed, but then, just like that –
Blue met hazel and we couldn’t shut up about it.
Now I miss you too much, and can’t
BE COOL
Like you would always tell me to.
So, there are no tears on my cheeks: I’m dry up here, too
I was okay with this turn, but there’s no
Catharsis of either kind —
Not a tell-tale blush
Nor that delicious exhaustion – oh god! I’m coming
up short on the words.
I can never be sure if I shouldn’t drink so much
Oh, to be dry (again)
I once gave it almost a year, then almost drowned in
the gin, and the ease in playing pretend.
Now I’m swimming in sand, floating on rocks
Never straight up.
All out of ideas, this well’s long been dry
No lyrics, no melody, just these interruptions
Between stalled fingertips and a taunting cursor
that blinks back at me.
Only these words, which do not pour,
do not stream out onto paper so effortlessly
But rather, air out harshly in a finite way
Bathing in the light of a digital screen.
There’s an impotence in not being able to talk to you
Knowing you’re somewhere near, blinking back
As a username, a like here or there, some local friend
that you never really were
and I never wanted you to be.
Cait Eggers has been a Bushwick resident since 2013, and plans on stickin’ around, L-shutdown be damned! She’s been writing poetry and music since childhood, very much inspired by Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, combined with an early inclination to write angsty love ditties (which came first? we’ll never know). She has performed her original music at Bushwick Public House, and looks forward to branching out into other local establishments in 2018.
Cover image courtesy of Matheus Ferrero