UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology FALL 2023 - Flipbook - Page 29
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
to love through what scares you
let’s drive somewhere because
when i try to be the boy who
does beautiful under the moonlight
glow of a steak & shake, i always
begin in tears & end up reviving
some buried bad feeling that i know
is nestled up close with one
of the ones i want to recall. ones
that i want to crawl back in me
& to save me from the country of men
who smear their spit
& blur truth
in order to blow
the heads off despair
all in the name
of not sanity but safety. whose?
never mine. safety being that which i try
on whenever a man or a bruise gives
me anything & so
in my dreams i do everything but try it.
in my dreams i call my mother routinely
i quit my job & drive
past the gone-by down-sun towns
& their lines drawn in the
past-present sand & just before
the willing
fertile ground, i stop
en route,
because i want bad food
& corporate soda to
laugh-cry into, just in case
love is just a person
who stands in for forgiveness
but actually comes through—
because it’s high-time we
got what we were looking for.
if i know anything it’s that
what’s holy sits next to what scares
the right-wing of the eagle
& the left-brain of you.
you can seek sanctuary but this is
everything, this is everything that the
age of tv dinners killed but can’t undo.
this is the only buried promise,
which the smell of grease
comes past the counter & covers up,
but us sweaty can’t-grow-ups who must spoonfeed ourselves myths to stay alive; we catch our own
replies:
drive
drive fast
drive fast toward skylines
fast toward skylines kissed by a lip
color called joy
First published by Sixth Finch (Winter 2021).
29