Three poems by ALEX DIMITROV
Blue Curtains
That day we were in a room with blue curtains.
Every time I wanted to speak
some hand would lift that pale, translucent fabric
and I’d see him standing on the circular balcony
which held something old and shapeless.
It was late morning.
We were already late for everything.
So I stood at one end of the room
and watched him. And between us
was a bed and a table and things
in a hotel—you know,
things that are anonymous
and belong to no one.
Like a sea or a life.
And all I remember is how expensive it was.
Not the room, but the feeling.
22 The Paris-American
That day we were in a room with blue curtains.
Every time I wanted to speak
some hand would lift that pale, translucent fabric
and I’d see him standing on the circular balcony
which held something old and shapeless.
It was late morning.
We were already late for everything.
So I stood at one end of the room
and watched him. And between us
was a bed and a table and things
in a hotel—you know,
things that are anonymous
and belong to no one.
Like a sea or a life.
And all I remember is how expensive it was.
Not the room, but the feeling.
22 The Paris-American
Like a Letter, I'm Never Coming Back
No signs outside my window,
nothing to read into autumn.
The wind with such velocity,
it reminds me we’ve said too many things.
Most animals, most animals prefer silence.
The distances at which we know each other
tell us little of how the dead know the earth.
Do you think restraint is a feeling you can aim with
when it’s bloodless at the center?
Do you think you have time?
I’m not sure what’s more important anymore,
our American past or future. And today is a thread
I’ve had in my mouth for too long.
Its color has dissolved on my tongue.
It no longer remembers the fabric it came from,
it no longer wants to remember at all.
23 The Paris-American
No signs outside my window,
nothing to read into autumn.
The wind with such velocity,
it reminds me we’ve said too many things.
Most animals, most animals prefer silence.
The distances at which we know each other
tell us little of how the dead know the earth.
Do you think restraint is a feeling you can aim with
when it’s bloodless at the center?
Do you think you have time?
I’m not sure what’s more important anymore,
our American past or future. And today is a thread
I’ve had in my mouth for too long.
Its color has dissolved on my tongue.
It no longer remembers the fabric it came from,
it no longer wants to remember at all.
23 The Paris-American
I Will Be Loving
Someone on the internet tells me,
“If we ever meet, I will lovingly degrade you.”
Someone I don’t know but want to.
I don’t know my own father.
Not the way he wanted to be known,
not even the way I wanted him.
Every time I have sex I am leaving the town
I was born in again and for good.
Every time I walk into a bedroom
I pretend to be someone I’m not
interested in talking about in poems.
The first man who kissed me
also put his entire fist in my mouth.
The last man inside me
wouldn’t even kiss me.
I am always inside me.
I am always inside.
I will lovingly degrade myself.
I will lovingly degrade myself for you.
I will degrade myself, reader.
For you.
I will be loving.
24 The Paris-American
Someone on the internet tells me,
“If we ever meet, I will lovingly degrade you.”
Someone I don’t know but want to.
I don’t know my own father.
Not the way he wanted to be known,
not even the way I wanted him.
Every time I have sex I am leaving the town
I was born in again and for good.
Every time I walk into a bedroom
I pretend to be someone I’m not
interested in talking about in poems.
The first man who kissed me
also put his entire fist in my mouth.
The last man inside me
wouldn’t even kiss me.
I am always inside me.
I am always inside.
I will lovingly degrade myself.
I will lovingly degrade myself for you.
I will degrade myself, reader.
For you.
I will be loving.
24 The Paris-American
Alex Dimitrov's first book of poems, Begging for It, will be published this March by Four Way Books. His poems have been published in the Yale Review, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Slate, Poetry Daily, Tin House, and Boston Review. He is the recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Award from the American Poetry Review, founder of Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York City, and the author of American Boys, an e-chapbook published by Floating Wolf Quarterly earlier this year. Dimitrov works at the Academy of American Poets, teaches creative writing at Rutgers University, and frequently writes for Poets & Writers.