Living. by TJ Prizio
1. (September ’07)
I want a girl who’s dying.
Bacon, egg, and the Middle East—
A hidden spectrum, I’m reading the IHOP Wikipedia page.
I want a girl who’s dying.
My own asteroid fly-by.
(In my dreams I’m getting ice cream in an alley—
Now I’m in the corner.)
I want a girl who’s dying.
I’ll know that love won’t last.
I’ll feel her pounding my chest to wake me
and I’ll shine into her eyes
like headlights.
I want a girl who’s dying.
An accompaniment for a moment.
I don’t think a girl who will live
will do.
I want a girl who’s dying.
red our veins will ignite
and we can burn ourselves from the inside
for a change.
I want a girl who’s dying.
I want her to be reincarnated a
rescue:
Past:
the Vick estate.
(Too bad I’m Catholic)
I want a girl who’s dying.
With smoke rolling off her fingertips
after she plunges her hand into the
bag of popcorn.
I want a girl who’s dying
a death where no one is anxious—
I call anxiety fear of aging.
How can you be anxious in
a fairy-tale future.
2. (April ’08)
I’m alive because I believe in summer
I’m staring at a pixelated 1-way to Milan
trying to remember my high school Italian
trying to remember Nonna shouting at Nonno
in a Christmas Eve kitchen
and the things they’d say.
I’m reincarnating myself
I believe in a rainstorm, before getting
hit by a car
you see only headlights
for the rest of your you.
Now I’m tattooless on the floor,
A pack of camels in my bedroom,
but in my dreams is the quiet
of a bow-tied teddy bear on a closet shelf.
I’m still remembering every day what her voice sounds like
wondering when it’ll come that I’ve forgotten it
so I’m hugging her sound like mom hugged me after Columbine. Surprise—
you couldn’t take it if it tackled you.
Death is like a dad that jumps from behind the shower curtain
during hide and seek.
Pablina, you were seeking.
Honey, you cried,
after you promised not to.
3. (October ‘07)
I who’s dying she to accept.
have a girl a death has time
We rule over/under/through the universe
and live in IHOP
where I show her
how
Y E S
in Rainbows tastes.
no governance
She’s jokingly claiming Pablo Honey is her favorite
so that I’ll laugh
“Until my head comes off”
–ty
We’re Blockbusting some indie film
steam rolling around the room from our cigarettes
she picked up after the diagnosis,
and I’ll quit after she quits
I don’t know what I shall do when
6-8 months arrives
or when her mother forces her into a scalpel
where the world is removed from her
we’d get bored
with nothing to keep
I fear the latter most.
She has become as have I from family—
The ones we liked most are dead,
she says us both were never made to be offspring,
nor was she made to be old.
To be old is to be the ember
you have to wait out before sleep
We are two feathers that fall furiously
in habituated tragedies
hidden on the shelf
two temporary tattoos over our hearts.
So,
I’ll keep
the girl
who’s
dying
and
tastes
like
ice
cream
inanalley

TJ Prizio is a recent graduate from the University of Connecticut, where he completed the Creative Writing program. Living in Trumbull, Connecticut, he spends his time struggling over New Hampshire mountains, attending concerts, and playing In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on repeat.