{"id":3453,"date":"2012-05-22T11:16:33","date_gmt":"2012-05-22T11:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/poetry\/?p=361"},"modified":"2012-05-22T11:16:33","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T11:16:33","slug":"2-poems-by-daniel-scott-parker-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2012\/05\/22\/2-poems-by-daniel-scott-parker-2\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Poems by Daniel Scott Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doppler Shift<\/strong><\/p>\n

We changed our clothes behind the RVs on the road.
\nI was reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the sea
\nswallowed your new Salvatore Ferragamo sunglasses.
\nThey were prescription lenses. Then you got stung <\/p>\n

by something with a tentacle floating in the jackal
\nwet of the Mediterranean, and it was starting to look
\nlike a bad day. You were reading
\nan article in the New Yorker<\/p>\n

squinting in the hard yolk of noon,
\nyour elbows scuttled in the coast of France
\nwhile I ran up to the scorching road
\nfor a bag of chips and cornichons. <\/p>\n

Our sunscreened bodies glistened like teriyaki
\nchicken, twisted and shiny on the crest
\nof St.-H\u00e9l\u00e8ne. You drew star shapes
\nin the sand, wearing a jet-stretch pony<\/p>\n

grin and the clothes of an emperor
\nwhile behind the sun\u2019s licentious
\nburn I was silently rehearsing
\nhow I was going to leave you.
\n_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Fallen Giants<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to sound so dramatic
\nbut everything changed in the moment
\nI saw you standing in the airport staring at another man<\/p>\n

who was sleeping and not knowing
\nhe was in the presence
\nof the most beautiful<\/p>\n

Tyrannosaurus Rex in the world.
\nIt was a replica of bones,
\nthe airport a kind of sepulcher <\/p>\n

in the non-time of space and Starbucks,
\nreliquary of business suits, which is the real
\nreason I was late. I was getting a latte. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I kissed you
\nclumsily and without the pricks
\nof flowers in my hand. <\/p>\n

I lost the car in the parking deck
\nthinking we were in K-9
\nand you asked what was that black<\/p>\n

line floating in the sky. You let me
\ntell you it was smoke from a jet
\nplane though you knew it wasn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

We rode our bikes in the rain
\nswerving over the backs of yellow
\nstriped eels of the transportation development<\/p>\n

authority and cracks in the asphalt from the heat.
\nAt the movie theater an old woman fell
\nand a crowd gathered around her. <\/p>\n

I wanted to stay, to show you
\nI, too, felt concerned. See? I too,
\nam sensitive and care about old ladies. <\/p>\n

When we got home I pretended to be a T-Rex
\ngnawing at your neck and clawing
\nunder your shirt, which made you laugh. <\/p>\n

You took your shoes off by my door.
\nThe trees outside were cold and bare.
\nWe made love like Thanksgiving dinner. <\/p>\n

Then we made dinner. I told you
\nonce I thought I had prostate cancer,
\nbefore I realized that it was only the beets. <\/p>\n

You told me it was sweet
\nhow worried I was for the old lady.
\nHow I waited there like everyone else.<\/p>\n

Later I wondered what it is about dinosaurs
\nthat people find so funny, how after extinction
\nno one takes you seriously.<\/p>\n

In my apartment you perused
\nthe cracks between the books
\nas though they were secrets:<\/p>\n

the mythology of youth
\nbased on fact but lacking
\nthe truth of things unspoken.<\/p>\n

You broke a wine glass, which is true,
\nand I told you in an e-mail that in preparation
\nfor your arrival I did too.<\/p>\n

And I did too want to climb the gaps
\nbetween the sense and the sentence
\nbetween the words<\/p>\n

we didn\u2019t say but turned
\nlike pages into swords,
\nbut that is too easy. That is not<\/p>\n

too easy, for when I tried to explain things
\nyou just said that Wholeheartedly
\nsounds like the name of a cereal.<\/p>\n

That my attention to detail
\nwas my blindfold to the forest.
\nAfter you left I sat on the porch<\/p>\n

and watched a puddle hold onto the sky
\nand while the crooked daylight hung,
\nwatched a puddle fold into the sky,<\/p>\n

left wondering then how
\ndo you go back home after
\na giant has severed its head.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________
\nDaniel Scott Parker<\/strong> is a native Georgian, currently living in Paris, France until he will move to Chicago to begin the MFA poetry program at Columbia College Chicago later this year. He has poems in Marco Polo and The Stray Dog Almanac. He makes excitement. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doppler Shift We changed our clothes behind the RVs on the road. I was reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the sea swallowed your new Salvatore Ferragamo sunglasses. They were prescription lenses. Then you got stung by something with a tentacle floating in the jackal wet of the Mediterranean, and it was starting to look like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}