Back to Issue Thirty-Two

I ONLY SMOKE CIGARETTES ON YOUR ROTATION

BY MATTHEW ROHRER

 

I ONLY SMOKE CIGARETTES
ON YOUR ROTATION

everyone else sees me
as the actual smoke

passing in front of their
selection in the vending machine

or waving frantically
to get their attention

while pulling apart
in the afternoon breeze

when I wake up in your bed
hungover, shredded cheese

in the bedclothes,
I always feel, briefly,

a terrible panic
that I never called home

with my excuses. But
you are my home.

 

 

IF YOU EAT THIS COOKIE I WON’T LET YOU IN TO PARADISE.

BY MATTHEW ROHRER

 

IF YOU EAT THIS COOKIE
I WON”T LET YOU IN TO PARADISE.
That is what
the whole thing comes down to.
I feel the late summer breeze
slipping in under
the heat of the day.
Everyone wants to put
their stamp on that. I walk
through the crowds of people
with coins instead of eyes.
I know they don’t see
me in league with scrubby
trees, passing notes to gulls
to pass on to the sea

 

 

Matthew Rohrer is the author of 10 books, most recently The Sky Contains the Plans (Wave Books) in which these 2 poems appear. He was a co-founder of Fence Magazine, teaches at NYU and lives in Brooklyn.

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