Cicatrix & Reasons To Stay | poetry by KG Newman

Cicatrix

Sitting lost again in rush hour traffic 
I like to pretend I’m someone who doesn’t 
check my email all the time 
and that I could tell you with certainty
how all the downtown streets were named.

In this way improvisational history
is also the history of us, a confusion
that only agreed to be with clarity
if our kids could hold both our hands
while skipping to the roller coaster.

We’ve debated the exact half-life of stars 
above us, though no agreement has been reached. 
And she keeps reminding me we have many
types of knives, each capable of making 
exactingly shallow cuts like

the feeling we’re losing something
and gaining it back all the same,
the static between the buildings, 
an abandoned ivied train station where
there’s no need for waiting anymore.

Reasons To Stay

Thinking of No as the first word
in a long and hard conversation, 

trying not to be the sort of epistolarian
who can’t bother to spell out and,

focusing on your lips
in apocalyptic 

and yes clandestine 
somehow still reminds me of clementine

and the sweet sticky juice
we tried to distill on the sill

of the basement window,
hoping for an alcohol content

that would take away our anger
or perhaps get as deep as this, where

old words have new meanings
and fewer counterpoints.