Laura Marie Marciano

Poetic Excerpts 14 & 13

14

Each action affects the next. I heard my parents watch British television together every Saturday night. She has to stop eating wheat. In pictures she is so beautiful and delicate. I am quiet when the language is not my own. I loved nothing forever. I only had a bookcase once, and it collapsed. Do you know every phone number has a sound? My mom doesn’t believe me. Also, Barbie’s legs bend. Also, he will tell you that you are beautiful and delicate and then he will tell you about his girlfriend. Do you know what middle class people expect from poetry? A glimpse of eternity. We over analyze what we believe in our bedrooms while our children are asleep until it means nothing. The same way that if you look in the mirror long enough your face will disappear. The tadpoles become frogs when no one is looking. Lisa Frank stickers would make you popular. Nicely formed breasts would make you popular. Money would make you popular. Wisdom would make you popular. In the middle morning the decaying courtyard looks like a Renaissance fair through blurry eyes and a small window. I had been smelly and depressed and I walked into her living room to find a shiny unicorn balloon and sincerity. I didn’t say thank-you enough, only concerned about the time passing and my insides imploding. It still hurts and there are no more doll games or acquaintances. I only knew you one day and it still hurts. The heart can break a million times but only be whole once.

13

This woman said I was lovely but not to get my yogurt fingers all over her appliances. We were doing cart wheels in the dusk soaked grass. He said we were the wheels of the cart. I’d never thought about that in my entire life. He was four. I want to be a neuroscientist and tell you that love is a mental illness. How else can you explain the children of Italy hooking heavy duty golden locks to ancient bridges in the name of ti amo. How else can you explain this spanglish conversation from the back seat to the front outside a library. I feel incredible pain when I think I will never be respected by society. You have my house key around your neck and you live 3,000 miles and one ocean away. Please. Remember the Bolivian girl at the corner of my street, the Nigerian boys at the bottom. The cool under breast of my breasts. The sunburned cheeks and bald vagina. Even though his heart was breaking her face was still his computer desktop. In the cold hotel room on a winter hockey trip my fifteen year old insides are completely destroyed and I feel pain for the first time because you blocked me on AIM. I know you think I am ugly. I know you don’t want to kiss me. And because you didn’t want to kiss me, now I believe it to be the truth of everyone. I can see Nonna’s skin becoming brown under the America sun. She hates it here. She was beautiful in Genova. What is she now. I loved the man who came to look at my apartment. I loved the gothic boy in my computer music class, the man behind the counter at Naidre’s, the snack bar man at every sports game ever known to man. I love the boy I went down on Good Friday. I     l         o         v         e.

Laura Marie Marciano is an emotive young lady writer, media artist, and performer. She likes to bring relational aesthetics into her work like imagine if this bio were written in large pink letter balloons floating in a field. She is a proud member of the Illuminati Girl Gang and has been published a few places. She teaches writing at Fairfield University. She’s 26 and lives in Brooklyn! Find her here.