Jennifer Firestone

      From The Room

First, it’s just sound, the poem tries to evoke the language, and little pictures settle in. What was so inward that it became internal? You were a supporting actor on TV, pretending this is what we do. You alerted them that his buzz went unheard or there was a lack of response. You can do that. It’s as if you lost your legs and kept talking, pretending it was all the same. And released from that room each night with a touch so light to not make it real. So easily you could walk down to the apartment to the grandfather piano and San Francisco books. To the bowls of colored glass and deep blue rug. You could say, Let’s get sushi or maybe Thai, and you would walk with the others with such hunger. You would stand outside with the coldest wet breeze on your face and grasp the tender menu. Ask for a small cup of tea. Later you would watch another murder show with red wine, a sheepskin throw.  

* * *

Up and away over these hills, you can feel yourself levitate as you come to the top.  Barking seals and warm sourdough, the tower tops where you disappear into fog. Our sights were on sea creatures, to study the mollusk, or the quick jelly sliding by. The spurts of foam that erupted surprisingly. With wet boots and careful balancing, you venture until you feel unsteady. He wasn’t so keen on this trip though not staunchly against it either. We treaded through spear-like succulents, evergreen shrubs and the occasional jeweled poppies. They barely parted for our bodies to traipse through and so we walked gingerly, the ocean pulling us in.

 * * *

You always thought it was too pretty this city but leaned into its breeze, the houses’ pastel pinks and greens. The eucalyptus pods burnished. When you drive on the highway, you see hills. He was a transplant from New York City, swimming among politeness. The grit lived inside like those cells distinctly trying to erase him. He hiked in jeans and a sweaty shirt, an east coast way. Dryness of dirt kicked off the ground, flies down the throat, around the eyes, in between each finger.

 * * *

The fog subsumes, suddenly you’re roaming and lost, or you see a healthy individual and ask the street name. The rolling hills seduce your imagination, and you want a car even though you don’t like to drive. The cells themselves were modified in Santa Monica, which makes you think of sun more than laboratory. You have a cousin there and without asking she conjures the salty air, so fresh as if perpetually churned, salting the cheeks, salting the hair. It’s not hard to get lost in the ocean or go down a muddy path. The perspective is skewed depending on its register. Everything is weighted on these transformative cells. Where you ignore that “experimental” can mean failure, can mean, we don’t really know, can mean for the power of science, for the power of invention. They are always taking notes and nodding. He is meticulous in his recounting of what his body divulges. Precision a certain speech that requires distance, a slender finger does the placing.