Rejects Corner - Tumblr Posts
the streams downtown
I found the rip in this ocean, while intently watching the dance of the waves’ froth. The water has been pouring onto me, feeling the depression of my collarbone, stroking the tear in my skin, echoing this hollowness inside me, for much too long. Swimming back to the rip, to stop this flow once and for all, means letting it caress my heart while I drown, letting forgetfulness take his seat. I found the rip in this ocean, and it’s intently watching me.
© Margaux Emmanuel
The champagne lingering in the driveway of his eyelids ransacks the minibar of his depressive tendencies. A suffering insufferable dandy with a corduroy smile spills the cough syrup on the window sill and walks through a non-smoking floor with an unlit cigarette giggling in between his teeth. The stained carpet mutters that he’s a homeless homesick and the tears sticking to the glass table know it already. So he sits back on a fatigued settee and pours himself a dubious drink with a parking lot view. So he sits back uncomfortably with his heart a little tight and he tells himself that it’s just another sick day.
sick days | © Margaux Emmanuel
clumsy town boy
Your heart
is stuck
in a long
car ride
edging
an endless
desert
empty
road
in 1973
sitting in
the backseat
reading Kerouac
butter-colored
baseball cap
no watch
timeless
wrist
high school
bomber jacket
covering a
white shirt
a chagrined
blue bra
his
aviator
Ray Bans
sliding down
the bridge
of its nose
listening
to the cassette
of a shattered
existence.
Two years
thousands of miles
away
he’s still
the one
appearing
in the
highway landscapes
ghostlike
you can almost
smell
his cologne
you thought
that you had
written
the last act
of that
tragedy
licked the seal
of that envelope.
But the trunk
is still
full of his
letters
the cursive ink
bruises you
at night
oh
the clumsy
town
boys
they really
mess you up.
© Margaux Emmanuel
Ill-chosen metaphors towel my body dry inch towards the word toying with the tip of my tongue you know the word the one eyeing the dark corners of the after party of infatuation the one stinging in the touch of bare-knuckled motorists pretending to be in trouble in the implied sensuality of those haunted eyes I said no peeking you already know the word oh I’m not trying to stop you, love all of these untalented talented teens know exactly what they want now turn off the radio whisper it in your licorice breath I’ll just be here falling asleep in the arms of dawn waiting.
don’t look at me like that, help me find this word | © Margaux Emmanuel
women in love
Your face clouds over
when the picture
of the girl
with the red
octagonal
sunglasses
red cheeks
from having recently cried
leaning
on your car
falls out of your wallet
only to remind you
in the sotto voce
of memory
that she kept your
love letters
in a battered copy
of Women in love.
You wonder
if she kept it
she always said
that it was a mistake
to reread the novels
of your youth
Oh, she was a hesitation
You remember
every rhyme
every bite
of the poems
that she wrote
on your lips
for she always said
that you only know
what you feel
once it’s been written.
She was damnation
You remember
seeing the
ink stains
sprawled on the cover
of her
DH Lawrence
in the hands
of someone else
at that
end of the year
garage sale
he was laughing
chewing
his cheeks
but the book
isn’t funny
maybe he was laughing
at your poems
he was laughing
because he doesn’t love her
and he never will
maybe he was laughing
because you are trapped
in those pages
you still live
every curve
every sharpness
of her letters
and she now lives
in the verse of another
he wasn’t laughing.
© Margaux Emmanuel
There was this boy, checkered Vans and we played charades in the back of the bus sixteen we sometimes we would always miss it and we would walk into the ring and he would eat his vanilla ice-cream and our eyes would meet in full contact but I would fight in southpaw; our moves were mirrored but we never managed never dared to really hit. His sticky chocolate eyes melted onto my black leather gloves and our words took our hearts into a headlock, silently skimming the sides of every post of his sweet Cupid’s bow with bare knuckles, untied shoes. One day he just wasn't at the bus stop I waited and waited he called and said "I took bus fourteen" but I loved him too much and he didn't love me enough to sucker punch.
disqualified | © Margaux Emmanuel