tigers don’t fall from the sky
i get locked in the ventilation room of the fine arts building while spraying my composition with finishing matte / one wednesday evening in march / see the lock click into place / before i ever really hear it / and get the familiar jolt of exhilaration
there’s a pattern in the ceiling of my mind / it brings me to the precipice of a thought / ‘what a cool way to go’ / and another / ‘this shouldn’t be your first impulse’
down state street silhouetted art students go home / bracing canvas bags bigger than themselves / against chicago’s wind / someone could see me, i could ask for help / i think instead of my own canvas bag / of being buffeted last september walking home / how my ankle twisted and the canvas shoulder strap broke / and how then, too, it was / another jolt of exhilaration / another ‘cool way to go’
in the twilit luster / i see my world differently / ‘i feel like how you draw hands says a lot about you’ i once said in a trance / i must have pre-known something i only today comprehend / hands i meant to render inviting / now seem clawing / dull drab colors lifted to rival with the vivids as i varnish them
on my knees / i wander into aimless thinking / about the stove i may have left ajar / about the ringing phone i ran out on / about (again) my childhood fixation with / fringe movies / about how my current predicament would very much happen to one of those protagonists
i don’t want to be functional / with ventilator fans whirring, accusatory / it is easy to relinquish coherence / ‘something is wrong with you’ / a thing i too seldom tell myself
maybe it doesn’t need to be said
when you go tubing at 15 in pissed-off lake potomac / and she flips you over with a petty wrist flick / when you go rock climbing for the first time / with a bleeding hand / and nearly shatter your toe in the fall / when you press the wrong part of the mandoline / and it sends the top of your finger clean off into the apples / when you go spray-painting things by yourself / at closing time / with no phone / knowing chicago and her storms are on the way
you have to discern / limerence in the pattern / tigers don’t fall from the sky / if encountered, they were most likely / provoked
A. Martine is a trilingual/multicultural writer, musician and artist. She's an Editor at Reckoning Press, co-EIC/Producer/Creative Director of The Nasiona, and has been nominated for Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions and The Pushcart Prize. She’s the author of AT SEA (CLASH BOOKS), which was shortlisted for the 2019 Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize, and BURN THE WITCH, which is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press. Follow her work: www.amartine.com.