House of Yes

you run to me in your pink snakeskin dress your smoky eyeliner our foreheads press together when we hug and i become a fork in the microwave zapped electrified i haven’t seen you in years you tell me in the cab how you love to ride your old billionaire boyfriend until you cum because it’s the only way you can have power over him but i’m busy with the sides of our knees which are touching and it doesn’t feel like when i’m in a cab with natalie or sav or even trevor it feels like i am a fork in the microwave and when we get to house of yes i light your cigarette in line i am careful as a neurosurgeon shielding your lips from the wind and when the drag queen stamps our wrists i resolve to never wash my hands again so i’ll know tonight wasn’t another effexor dream we buy vodka redbulls with your old billionaire boyfriend’s credit card and run to the dance floor you roll your head back in bliss your pale neck glowing under the purple lights everyone is touching knees in this small universe and we notice there’s a drag queen pulling people onto a big box onstage to dance and i look at you smiling and you nod smiling and i grab your hand we barrel through the crowd and it’s crazy but i’ve never felt so sure and so calm in my life not a shimmer of stage fright not my usual plague of indecisiveness just the assured lucidity people feel when there’s only one choice the drag queen pulls us onstage we climb onto the box it’s tall but barely wide enough for both of us and suddenly we’re so close in front of hundreds of people their bodies glowing under purple lights and we’re dancing i look at you and i don’t know what but something is invoked within me some wild spirit or mischievous sapphic muse and i mouth the only words i’ve ever been sure of kiss me and then you’re holding my face to yours i forget people are watching until i look out over the sea i wave and a tsunami of joyful hands rolls across the room i am a fork in the microwave, sparking, electric.

*

The Experiment

once, a man decided the hills and valleys of the skull reveal the soul. i study his drawings, misshapen crania molded to shrunken brains. raisins cradled by dented cans. i wonder at my own unmapped skull, and my doctorfather tells me i will not find my soul there. today i test both hypotheses. i confront the bathroom mirror and wrap the measuring tape around my head. circumference below average, just as i suspected. eyes closed, i scan the scalp for peaks and gullies, revealing the strange topography of the brain. my fingertips dig through coarse hair, skimming constellations of scabs underneath. i’ll come back for them later. my left thumb discovers a ridge near the crown. this one is familiar—the time an old boyfriend called me a cunt on the subway and a woman whipped her head around in horror and she looked just like my mother. i wince and continue the experiment. my right middle finger slides over a protrusion at the nape of my neck. i know what is contained here—the yorkie my grandpa loved too much and wouldn’t let go of until she was sixteen and full of mush. i shrink from her small face and continue. my right ring finger traces a long mountain behind my ear—my sister at twenty-five, lifting the top layer of her hair to reveal thick swaths of silver. my wretched, excruciating culpability. my left index finger unearths a concavity as if someone tapped me with a gavel. i know what forged this crater—my father, weeping at my bedside, his hands buried in my hair, searching, searching, searching.

Aliza Haskal is an emerging poet (from a clamshell) attending Syracuse University’s MFA Program. She received her B.A. in English in Virginia and a University Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Aliza is published by Bullshit Lit, Applause Journal, Atlantic Northeast, et al.

A Song for Aliza