Vanessa Gabb

Skydeck Selfie

  

everyone out smiling

one another in the city up in

a crack binge last night out

on the ledge a real life 

didn't move me

to say things like i don't know

like i know i don't know just

like i meant them but didn't

really mean all the little i brought with me

i say things just to hear them

outside my mouth even if they mean

doesn't matter to me

i don't know whose film i think

i am in this fire

watching the history of burning

watching a film

on the history of the burning

is watching myself burn and wait to be rebuilt

if they are going to make us watch this

they should tell the truth

there are children here lovers walking away

believing no one fell and no one fell

smashed red to come and not think

about exploitation

to think about exploitation and want to say this

this is what i think of and speak of

walk with me

williams says love is unworldly and nothing comes of it but love

and nothing

stays in me more than the same person

for more than three thousand days

i have been the same

person for more than three thousand days

we are one hundred

stories the one hundred stories

revolutionary

this just aint it this just aint

I looked him dead and said nah

he said are you sure that's you

speaking are you

about tomorrow

i don't know i don't know i don't know

what does it mean to know anyhow

does it mean you have happened to yourself

unequivocally the clouds continue

have you ever tried

to let your body listen?

have you ever

thought of changing your hair?

what color would it be

if you didn't think I was that man

if you heard these words

before you started thinking

they were bad

i am trying to be no better than good

just good at knowing

what it really means to be me what does it

a woman on line with the tits i want

to have sex we haven't had since

we landed it's gone

my way for awhile so i walk along

the top of this place so he can take photographs

and i can look at him and look at him and take nothing like photographs

Vanessa Gabb is the author of Weekend Poems (dancing girl press, 2014) and midnight blue (forthcoming, Porkbelly Press). Recent poems have appeared or will in Luna Luna, The Boiler Journal, and dusie. She is the co-founder of Five Quarterly and teaches at Newark Academy. More stuff at missgabb.tumblr.com.