eight poems

Corey Qureshi

Call from a strange number

Call from a strange number about resolving
the new pain in my mouth that I’ve told exactly zero
people about
I said I’d return their call within
the six month referral period
I said I’m tired of errands
yet they keep walking up and leashing me
in chemically
warm spring sun I sit and let shadows
tire my skin

Feeling the softest sting on the back of
my hand and wrist and forearm
Wishing I could unhear so much because
seemingly every person is clashing
or asking for some fulfilled thing that
I said I’d return complete before running off
to a new divot to squat in to softly box
the ground til more change or requests

pressure

How can I bring myself
Running rabid and apathetic
We’ve just got to deal
It’s a weekly rotation
You can see an individual’s tension rise

Most can’t hold back
Running rabid and apathetic
It’s nearly my turn
Everything’s under my skin
just Go with it

Do you get how we could be this way?

Monday, September

Isn’t a swarm of any
Nonhuman crowd some
Sort of overwhelming?

You might can
Acclimate and stifle
But the anxious

Spark will
Still repeatedly
Be Born.

I’m worn and not
Because it’s Monday.
The choir of birds out back

Raucously squeak out the end of
Summer, they don’t
Want to hear the world’s

Crunchiness that comes
After all the lines’ve
Melted together for so

Many weeks. Inside,
The grapefruit juice
Is a color that’s aged

Like this conversation,
Pervasive and I don’t
Want to hear it but

Must be gone through,
Rot’s not an option.
Acclimate and stifle

Whatever you don’t
Think is productive,
(a wild thought considering

The need for an economy
Of the dance against the
Raucously opposing rants

That can’t let any other
Thing be as it could).
What is offered up

As a good faith discussion
Feels bait for another
Set of overwhelming

Control devices that
I can’t accept, will be
Repeatedly worn by,
and want to forever end

a few types

flattened yourselves into
protagonist’s poses in need of attn
Eyes rolled and the days rolled on
Nothing changed for the better.
some faceless judgement:

Bro is a little too grandiose
for his own good. It’s
endearing but one is inevitably
tucked away. Out in the
field I ache for the sake of scraps.
and you? [shrugs, waves you off]

Bro is a little too aggressively
anti- his former milieu
Showing his ass, it’s small
like a Dennis Cooper character’s
Dialed in
like a Dennis Cooper listicle
yet frothing

Bro is Unable to
be normal in the room
has to itemize and/or squint
with scrutiny. Goes home
and wonders about himself
smokes a bowl and hates himself,
another casualty

I’m out in friendless rooms making
my way and enjoying the ambiance
No stuttering, unable to be normal but that’s
because there is no standard
where consistency’s a question
of starvation or not
of playing into it or not

I’m watching decent guys
fall victim to their hangups.
they’ll go hungry

Eyes roll at the ensuing desperation,
wallets open or walk away,
delusion widens or grows plausible

You couldn’t pay me to care

You couldn’t pay me to care. Well, maybe
But the desperation is plasticized into something you
may or may not can glean. Can’t read me. God tells me to
reel it in or starve. Old friends askancedly sympathetic
and confused. Yes I’ll take your donations. Yes I’ll take
whatever facebook gives us for free from the neighborhoods
we lie about living in. Am I still allowed a meal
if I didn’t meet your virtue quota? I bite every hand
I’m obese and hungry and my daughters will one
day be embarrassed by all the noise. The doctor made a comment
about money and I shot him a look. Everyone does me a disservice
because they aren’t feeding the delusion. Fixing things
can be so simple, it’s just always gift-wrapped into
inaccessibility. An issue that has dragged for years
solved in minutes when you’re in the right room
But getting there? Best pray and play into heartstrings
I clearly begrudge and am invariably jokerfied by this

Hourly Parking

Dont be tricked down into a mudpit
by your friend
Keep all affairs settled alone, away from love
Your heavenly parking
is Only a quick fix to whatever’s
subconsciously jumping out of ya

a Sweet bowing of notes of
swollen and adorable eyes set to
convince you into a mudpit of debt
of dragged into Some Whole Thing
that shouldnt be happening

Heavenly parking’s only a quick fix,
they clock your hours in the zone
out in this neighborhood. The
whole thing’s tentative, you’ll move on
into new degradable/ing scenesz.

neglected

ppl get so obsessed
with experiments that
they can’t engage normally
with normal things

They should go dust the high surfaces
of their nests and scrubb down tubs
My pants are wet as I say go

live out the pleasures in slowness.
a Sitcom Life is one disturbed
and only reaching out
back to slowness
or the other way around

an obstacle
can only be neglected
into abstraction for so long.
There’s inevitable drama
You couldve just handled it
Now sorry and sad
You were busy seeing
what happened
Normal turned dire
Piss puddled at ankles

It was an unconscious experiment
at neglect, and
all that you involve
into motion will be back to see
how it negatively affects you

Are you sure

We share some ideas and then it grows still and awkward

I don’t see it that way

It’s hard to explain the way wryness steers us apart off into singular

judgements rude or anxious or smiling

I’m smiling and rude or it feels like it with these reactions I get

So okay, whatever. Are you sure?

This is a long walk down to what hopefully turns out to be a long walk down

into unhappily forthright feelings or smiling near-silences in the melting ice