by Eli Sahm
i crumple and swallow a twenty
and promise not to touch anything too much
the ticketer kisses our hands and moves aside
no matter how much we scream in unison
about fairness the paintings won’t
make noise or move
she selfies in front of monets until i fall
in as much love as possible
with his frantic water i hate her
the more she laughs
i wonder in the perfume among strangers
how painted water would move if we watched it
all day or set it on fire
everybody’s naked and has believable penises
we take pictures we’ll forget to appreciate later
the guards clamp batons at the ground
the blue guitarist’s neck is too long to hold up
so we scream the notes for him
a naked man squats in a threshold
dangling a frog over his mouth
i nod my head for hours toward getting it
until the police box up his frog and haul him away
which reminds me of 6th grade silent reading
when i was caught using Absalom, Absalom!
for a pillow because i couldn't get past the first page
i pulled staples from the carpet
to add to the staple ball i kept in my desk
and squeezed whenever the teacher questioned me
and then it's nighthawks
trapped in an unclosed triangle
the framed glass growing opaque
with childhood fingerprints
blocked from touching whoever i came with
Eli Sahm received his MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He was a finalist for the 2016 NC State Annual Poetry Contest and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Your Impossible Voice,Occulum, Rabid Oak, and The Indianapolis Review.