Brenda Shaughnessy

“(from A Love Story, Eight Takes)


8


As it turns out, there is a wrong way to tell this story.

I was wrong to tell you how multi-true everything is,



when it would be truer to say nothing.

I've invented so much and prevented more.



But I'd like to talk with you about other things,

in absolute quiet. In extreme context.



To see you again, isn't love revision?

It could have gone so many ways.



This just one of the ways it went.

Tell me another.”
― Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar

“I'm Perfect at Feelings,

so I have no problem telling you

why you cried over the third lost

metal or the mousetrap. I knew

that orgasms weren't your fault

and that feeling of keeping solid

in yourself but wanting an ecstatic

black hole was just bad beauty.



Certain loves were perfect

in the daytime and had every

right to express carnally behind

the copy machine and there are

no hard feelings for the boozy

sodomy and sorry XX daisy chain,

whenever it felt right for you.



And when the moment of soft

levitation with erasing hands

made you feel dirty, like

the main person to think up love

in the first place, I knew that.

It's okay, you're an innocent

with the brilliance of an animal

stuffing yourself sick on a kill.

Don't, don't feel like the runt alien

on my ship: I get you. I know

the dimensions of your wishing

and losing and don't think you

a glutton with petty beefs. But

even I, who know your triggers,



your emblematic sacs of sad fury,

I understand why the farthest fat trees

sliver down with your disappointment

and why the big sense of the world,

wrong before you, shrugs but

somewhere grasps your spinning,

stunning, alone. But you have me.”
― Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar