R. M. O'Brien

FIRST DATE

The city is wartorn—

Birds cycle thro' their songs like car alarms.

We eat pollen w/ insectoid silverware

& vomit EASTERN EUROPE in botanic gardens.

I ask you, What is that radiating off the finger-quotes

you place around the word tongue?

Now it's radiating o! unspoken exclamation points...

"!" "!" "!" "!"

You ask me am I willing to die for you—yr sword is hungry.

We get so sentimental & patriotig

we steal hundreds of thousands of classified gov't cables.

(It looks like we are only listening to Lady Gaga.)

We are in love. We fling the informaçion into the street,

like dollar bills at the end of a movie, or doves

@ a wedding @ the end of a movie—

the journalists,

the guy in the van,

the kill order,

everything.

We are convicted of treason. They cut our hair like Joan of Arc—

condemned to sleep on the Couch of the Lord forever...

We run away to yr apartment.

I pull back yr curtains and the horn'd moon dissolves you.

I kiss you on yr forehead—

It leaves a mark, my lips, a scar.

Yr third eye: it burns.

R.M. O'Brien, 30, was born in Oswego, New York to a jeweler and a nurse. He curates the monthly reading series WORMS. His chapbook, Ant Killer & Other Poems, exists. Birds Blur Together, a collaboraçion w/ poet Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, is available from his own WORMS Press.