Three Poems by Jon Lemay

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Lil Peep and John Keats Are Still Dreaming

after April Bernard

It wouldn’t feel right
to have most of what I want—

Nobody has died! She’s forgiven me!
No one says I’m too sad! I’m never left waiting!

But that doesn’t mean happiness
doesn’t swell within me every now and then

like the louder half of a siren, and it doesn’t
mean I need to be saved or solved—

because if I wanted someone to unearth me,
I would have covered myself with dirt by now.

It’s just that people leave and take things with them.
The flame retreats back into the stovetop, hushing

the chord moaning from the kettle. Recently
a girl I was sleeping with told me I love your body

and I love touching it, and I just don’t understand
how that stopped being true. If I’ve ever loved

touching someone, not a day passes that I don’t think
about touching them just once more.

*

It’s already been such a bad year

so put your mouth on the valve of my heart and inhale. Lately I’m never so sad as when I’m about to finish my last drink of the evening, since I’m limiting myself to three so long as I can help it. The only reason I write all this is because I still love you. Recently I told a friend that I sometimes think my life has become the world’s most sprawling joke. Aren’t there worse things? she replied. It didn’t take long to master living with you, but I only mastered living without you just in time to start living with myself, which I am not enjoying. No one has touched me in months, and I don’t think anyone will touch me for many more. But I still cherish the sensation of putting on nice underwear in the morning while I imagine who will peel it down my legs later on. I go to bed each night feeling radiant and useless, like a handheld radio that shushes in my rib cage because someone has tuned it to the wrong station.

*

To a Stranger

Listen to me long enough, and I’ll tell you
about all the things that have almost killed me.

They range: from cars to pools,
from my brother (quite by accident)
to myself (quite on purpose).

I remain a nerve, naked, writhing
and drowning in too much sunlight.

Last night I felt so lonely
that I made and named dozens of paper cranes.

This morning, when I woke up,
I took a pair of scissors
and snipped off their heads, one-by-one.