Four poems by Gabriel Cleveland

Don't Take It

By Gabriel Cleveland

I used to snap rubber bands against my wrists,
first for fun, then to feel as much pain as possible,
pulling back elastic ‘til it sometimes broke in half.
My skin was red for hours, but the pressure in my chest,
like fluid smothering my lungs, felt lighter for a while.
I thought I was an idiot, a beetle in a bird's nest,
meant to be swallowed up and spit out by my peers.
I'd learned to fly a plane, shoot a gun, and make fire in wilderness,
but I carried their words inside and felt worthless. I thought
I couldn't take it, tried to die one winter night by falling
asleep in the cold. Somehow, I made it, snapped out of suicide
when I realized I didn't have to hold those voices in;
you don't either. Don't take it; don't make someone else's words your life.




Body Aflame

Some weeks, life's all black nails and burnt splinters,
heat on your shoulders left from flames long-starved out.
Some mornings, you scratch your head and ashes
fall to mingle with dead skin in your bed sheets
and you think, "How is that possible? I've taken,
like, a million showers since the fire." But then
it occurs to you that they might be your ashes,
that your charcoal heart ignites whenever someone strikes
a match, that your body is a tinder box
ravaged by an inferno no one managed to put out.




Perfectionist

~for Brittany

Join the rest of us who dine with failure
regularly– it’s not such a bad guest
most of the time– it tells a lot of jokes
and occasionally even treats.  When you get used
to having it around, you can almost
forget those days you would draw
curtains and turn off lights when it knocked
on your door and called your name, insisting
there was an easier way to live; you can
almost remember success holding you
against the bed, whispering in your mouth
that it would be just you two forever.
We’ve all heard that song and dance before–
wipe your eyes, have a seat– we saved you a plate.




For My Hero, Still

My hero's got a black spoon under the car seat,
oh God. I remember when he rode his bike
for hours just to pick me up from school.
He lives in his car, dies slowly
through his veins. He and my dad dove in
glacier water back in Alaska, now he begs
our uncles not to call the cops. They're after him,
he says, have been since Washington. I picture
the hurricane we rode out in a Porta Potty during
a Dylan show, the hard rain Bob invoked
drenched us clean. He's in the hospital,
mangled and saved by luck, part metal,
part pain-killer. I'm ten again, and we die
over and over in Prince of Persia, but I blink and
he fades from truth, swears he's off
the drugs one-too-many times. 
Just like that, he’s gone three more years.



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 About the author: Gabriel Cleveland is still incredibly baffled by his existence, even after 28 years. To mitigate this, he's thrown himself head-first into creative projects, from script writing to video game character creation to mailing poetry on postcards to total strangers. He graduated from Pine Manor College with an MFA in creative writing. He maintains a writer page on Facebook, which is full of early drafts and other exciting material: http://Facebook.com/GabrielTHEPOET.

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