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