I’ve Forgotten the Natural World

I’ve forgotten the natural world
but wear pastel mint socks
to match Cocabella panties,
a white gardenia blouse,
and Miu Miu apple silk dress

I stroke your arm on our date
at a poetry reading on the 24th floor
of the Standard Hotel

I’ve just met you but
I think I know you intimately
You have some trauma
from a stepdad who force fed you olives

Ross from Friends is here, looking morose
with a baseball cap pulled low
and his wife leaning into him
with tiny diamond flowers
glued to her nails

I like the fish motif on your shirt
Is it from Opening Ceremony?
Have you heard about how lion fish
are destroying the coral reef in South Florida?

I smell like an androgynous apricot
I drink Diet Coke through a straw
to preserve a nectarine
melon rubellite bois de rose
sunstone lip stain
singing ecstasy to my shell
oh baby
the baby blah
the chrysanthemum blah
the golden way I touch your face

I spill on your Opening Ceremony shirt,
my eroding lips saying sorry
past my prime

This is a pastoral landscape of green and blue
that I’ll stare at later,
refresh the page over and over
in a hotel room

simultaneously
human and celestial,

sad despite having everything
I’ve ever wanted

I’ve forgotten the natural world,
but I’ll turn it into webcam porn to sell on Jasmine

You are less put together than you
appeared online,
your colorful personality
translates to manic but is still
kind of sexy

Can you sit still for one moment

Children of God

UFO Cult San Diego

Therapy Now

A Cat and a Girl Bouncing on a Trampoline
being filmed

The world is a vampire ——
You won’t stop saying that

I stare at the computer instead of your face
even though you’re the best I’ve ever had

I wear Queen Anne’s lace
and you suck strawberry Jolly Ranchers
to mask the taste of olives
 
 
 
Zoe Brezsny is a writer from Oakland, California, who now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of two chapbooks, POV and Polyorchid. She studies poetry at Columbia University. When she’s not working on a full length collection of her poetry, she works in the Publications Department at David Zwirner Gallery.