Liminal
/I received your drawingsAnd the Letter in a yellow envelopeMy therapist says that I still love youThat I can’t know what will happenWere I to see you againThe drawing I liked best is of two peopleDancingIt says For youIt says I don’t know why they danceYesterday I went to see Miami ViceFor the third time.I changed my mind about Sonny andUnderstood Isabella’s anger Who are you?She says after finding out he’s a good guyLike her I could not face you—We weren’t riding in a car but the landscapeAll these colors living in the skyThe morning so paleI never quite knew if I was deadAre we ever free to choose what we know?And did we make the moves on each other too?The scene that got to me is at the endBoth sit outside,On stepsin front of a blue/green house,Overlooking the seaIsabella places her head on Sonny’sShoulders he wraps his arm around herAt some point you see his fingernailsI think he had a habit of nail bitingWhen he was your ageShe wears her hair openImpossible to love and live at the same timeFor all his guns, determination and beautyThis habit of his to twitch his lips, to stare intoThe horizon out of windows, like you he wasInto negotiating percentages—The space between the land and the sea—It cannot be negotiatedA critic called Miami Vice a dramathat is ultimately about contained freedomI thought of you when Sonny’s Shadow entersThe hospitalYou were never strongYou live with your parents nowOn a farmFrom what I don’t know, you’re still intoCriminal behaviorYou blew my cover---Christine Herzer is a poet and visual artist. I paint inside out; I write outside in. My poems stage locations for private, public & global intensities to happen in. I desire language. I make mouth stamps. Christine divides her time between Paris and India. In 2008 she was invited to read her poetry for the literary journal Upstairs at Duroc, the Ivy Writers Reading Series in Paris, and Re-Loquations, Talking Poetry in Mumbai. Her poems have appeared in Louis Liard Magazine, Fogged Clarity, Upstairs at Duroc, and New York Quarterly (forthcoming). She will graduate with a MFA in Poetry from Bennington College in June 2009.Join the Open Letters facebook page!Return to the Main Page