Here I am exposed like everybody,
on a rooftop with high-rise friends,
backgammon,
cigarettes and moonshine,
spitting out the grit of sour sunflower seeds,
koobideh and green peppers, warm vodka and melancholic drums,
the black and white patrol cars
below us are rats in circles.
The violent roads the pigeons
who come for breadcrumbs.
After the bomb, gasbirds.
But bro that’s nothing--
here I am exposed like everybody.
We’re not canonized, but we love
to stand in marketplaces watching
the store clerk ring up two neatly chopped
hog feet into a little bag while thinking
here I am exposed like everybody.
Somewhere years ago a newly born pig
had his face buried in his mother’s belly.
Bro that’s nothing, nobody wants to hear about that.
Nobody wants to dig up hunger
dogs barking in the dark of a junkyard.
Nobody wants the metal web of a fence
bent into words:
Here I am exposed like everybody.
Our bosses tease us,
our customers conceal their credit cards
deep into their back pockets before
crawling to our office. What can you tell us
about loving? We have been taught
that we die without one another.
What kind of poem can we write
that will make you want to peel it off the wall and say:
Here I am, exposed like everybody.
ARTHUR KAYZAKIAN is a poet and MFA candidate at San Diego State University. He is also a contributing editor at Poetry International. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Northridge Review, Chaparral, Taproot Literary Review, Confrontation, San Diego Poetry Annual, and Rufous City Review.
