Parkland, Florida (Revised)

In a town sinking
inches each year
back into the Everglades,
we spent summers plucking petals
from wild orchids, drinking
brackish water, testing luck
and trying hard to get lost
on roads we knew like old adages.

Loxahatchee Road was wild,
following the curve of a creek—
a streak of dirt that cut the county
clean in half. Once at the end of it,
eighty ounces of Olde English in,
we found a baby alligator tied by its neck
to the trunk of a Live Oak
with pink fishing line.

Ankle-deep in black water,
you cut it loose with your car key
in the light of headlights and a half-moon.
We watched the sawgrass
bend, strange curves and angles
as the gator swam free. The thin vein of
Loxahatchee was pulsating with no real
conviction to our left, and the glades spread
strange and flat everywhere else—
half a peninsula covered in damp carpet.
With quickly fading flushed cheeks, we were

two ghosts, stunned and disappearing
as daylight seeped slow over the brim
of marshland and
into puddles at our feet.

parkland, florida

in a town sinking inches every year
back into the everglades,
we spent summers plucking petals
from wild orchids, testing fate
and trying to get lost on
roads we knew like old adages.

loxahatchee road was wild,
following the curve of a creek,
a streak of dirt that cut the county
clean in half. once at the end of it,
eighty ounces of olde english in,
we found a baby alligator tied by its neck
to the trunk of a live oak
with pink fishing line.

ankle-deep in black water,
you cut it loose with your car key
in the light of headlights and a half-moon.
the everglades were strange and flat
behind you, and sawgrass swayed
in the slow-motion wind
as the gator swam free,
cut loose. we sat and watched the trail
its tail frantically carved in the water
from the cold hood of your volkswagen.
shaken into sobriety, we were

two ghosts, shocked and disappearing
as daylight seeped slow over the brim
of marshland and into
our open hands.

paris

we are drunk after lunch
and lost in the latin quarter—
your footsteps counting cadences,
quick ticks on a metronome
walking us eventually
to the end of this movement.
then, the boulevard saint-michel and
suddenly the seine, opaline in the sun.

after cinque arrondissements
and four or five da capa al fines
in the form of platitudes like
paris is laid out like a nautilus shell, spinning
out from the center and
in barcelona, the buildings looked like
they had hangovers--

finally montmartre, with
the smudge-faced men tying
loose green and red and yellow strings
around the wrists of gullible tourists
in front of the carousel
at the bottom of the steps of sacre coeur.

and at the bottom of those steps i am
at the bottom of a canyon,
with a fray of strings around my wrist
and whines of ghost accordions echoing in my ears,
and flying, dipping, expressionless unicorns
spinning in front of my eyes.

zurich

on top of lindenhof,
lime blossoms and tiny green fruit
hang delicate from tendrils, thin
yellow ribbons strung from the lindens' branches.

we sit, silhouettes under the tangles
of limb and leaf, and in silence
we assume we're alone,
but birds shoot out from under the deck like arrows
at the start of a car engine
like the clearing of a throat.

and they are silhouettes, too,
suddenly so many feathered shapes,
flapping and flying around us against
seamless blue: the sky and
lake zurich, an open mouth
circled by rows of pointed,
snow-capped
teeth.

chapbooks

  (hand-sewn bindings!)

i've only assembled four so far, but i have enough supplies to make about twenty. email me (regimes@gmail.com) if you're interested!

(not a poem)

hello!

i'm going to be making about twelve hand-assembled chapbooks of a bunch of my poems this week. they're $5, but i'll also accept really sweet trades! email me at regimes@gmail.com if you're interested in buying/trading.

or, if you just want to exchange poems, i'd love to do that too. you can email me or just mail one/some my way:

erin berkowitz

198 tremont street, box #141

boston, ma 02116

i have a really sweet typewriter and will whip you up a poem to send right back. so fast!! promise.

i'm not sure anyone actually reads this, but thanks..!

how i spent my spring break in one-hundred words or less

i collected your words like they were winning ends of wishbones. i dried them out on the windowsill and i bottled them up in water-spotted jam jars and i shelved them and labeled them and watched them turn brittle and useless as dull toothpicks. you had a laugh like the hands of ghosts, though. those never stayed in the jars very long. they'd creep out under the lid like they knew the process of evaporation better than you did, slip back into me through the backs of my hands, sink into my bones and

stay for a while.

bridges of bones

i am building bridges made of bones with my bare hands. a yawning sunrise smiling like it's made of bees is spitting up all over the window but i'm keeping busy turning mountains to molehills, testing the ice with my pickaxe. your thoughts are constant paper airplanes in my airspace, though, so i know: she had legs for days and the round mouth of someone you kept your secrets away from, like weddings and widowers. but you spend all your time with typewriter keys now anyway--you'll sink like lead through that thinning ice.

maybe it'll wear off, maybe there'll be an eclipse

the flight of the bird in the egg, your heart rattling in your chest. (it just wants to shake its wings a little. it just wants its feathers caught in something other than the bridge of your brittle ribcage. it just wants to shake off the arteries like hot air balloon tethers and float float float until it finds a happier home, maybe in the poconos.)

i tell it to shh, shh but i am just an outline of something that could be worth listening for and my breaths and hums and sighs are just books you've already read, just static on the am radio.

marlboro twenty-sevens, or the first warm night of the year

still

  sometimes: i want

a cigarette between my lips and my two feet back on your back porch, but i am not

soft like cement.

i am not smart like the

me of one month ago, since

i am sure of my faults now    but not sure of much else,

, , although more times than    some times i wonder if i look as

flimsy as i feel, since

i don't even know myself when i am alone, since

i know this is just some cinematic sprawl of a face and constant

quivering

vigilance