Josef Lemoine’s work can be found in the Spring 2010 issue of RipRap and the November 2010 issue of Word Riot. His favorite celebratory meal is frozen Costco waffles and Dos Equis Ambar.
Three Poems (March 20, 2011. Issue 26. The SLAM & FLASH Issue!)
To the Sixteen-Year-Old
To the sixteen-year-old
shouting in the library
that he can do
whatever he wants?
Try robbing a bank
Swan dive off a church steeple
Go tell the president
about the bomb
in the white house
French kiss a porcupine
Take flight on a sparrow
Try and stop the wind
with your fingertips
I want to see you
squeeze peace treaties
through your beef jerky nipples
And end the world’s hunger
with chalk
Give birth to jungles
Send the polar bears their ice caps
And surrender
your jackhammer wrists
to the saints
For despite your cocked brow
and thin curling lip
that scrawls lengthy invitations
to sock you in the jaw?
Your face is a time machine -
a mirror I can step into
where the world is still more than
concrete and keyboard
oil rig and wire
When the eyes of my youth
climbed a shocking blank canvas
so wide and so tall
that I thought it was sky
And I splashed that canvas
with grasshopper greens
and Tonka truck yellows
Red Barron reds
and mailbox blues
While peddling my smile
while gabbing to God
louder than a sea gull
more free than a whistle
And God would talk back through
my grandmother’s wrinkles
and the basketball heartbeat
of my baby brother’s chuckle
God would talk back
through all the world’s tulips
and all the world’s bees
Chanting
You can do whatever you want
You can do whatever you want
You can do whatever you want!
But God’s voice has since died
and I was the one who killed it
When fallen angels
whispered panic on my collarbone
I duct-taped God’s lips
till she bit off her tongue
And now my dreams of flying
have turned to sitting
and the promise of tomorrow
shattered last week.
So to that sixteen-year-old
still shouting in the library
Ignore me
Do not build your temple
on the burial ground
of my swing set
Instead, take back the dreams
banks pillaged and squandered
and return them to those
whose hopes have been hijacked
Swan dive off a church steeple
and glide upward
to the stars
to remind whose who’ve fallen
that their wings are not broken
they’re only folded.
Then unveil the next time bomb;
its full name is “You”
assembled with silly string
confetti
and a drum
Spring-loaded to rise
in a mushroom cloud
that spells “Yes”
Woman
Woman, I told you
I sweat like a corona bottle
‘cause I’ve got lava
running through my veins
when the others have
cherry kool-aid
I told you
that the grease that slicks
my nose and cheekbones
makes me smoother and sweeter
than melted chocolate
I told you
that I slouch like a chimp
‘cause this sequoia
couldn’t see your daisy
without bending its trunk
through the clouds
My bony elbows
are ballpeen hammers
My jagged teeth
have ripped the throats of jaguars
And my hairline recedes
‘cause I asked it to
And I’ve told you my Adam’s apple
sticks out on a branch
and you can play my ribs
like a xylophone
‘cause I am Eden -
the garden and the snake -
remember those woods
between my thighs?
And we giggle and toy
with the rainbow wax paper
that crinkles between us
until you reach for the corners
to yank it away
and see what I have yet to tell you
That, beneath the folded arms
and the bushy eyebrows
I am a busted toilet at the racetrack
I am a thirteen-car pile up
on a moonless night
with a baby bleeding
in a Volkswagon
And I am a cosmic cannonball
of fire and ice colliding
with Times Square
at rush hour
And the things I’ve told you, I’ve said
‘cause I’ve got chicken wings
flapping under my shoulder blades
and tiny yellow marbles
bouncing in my ball bag
And I don’t know that I could watch you go.
For inside my chest
is a sabretooth tabby
clawing at my pores
howling like a ghost
dreaming nothing more
than to taste your breath
But he’ll dance circles on your lap
and slobber on your chin,
his butt wagging
across your face in tick-tocks
And I’ve smacked him and kicked him
and whooped him and prodded him
But around you, I can’t get him to sit
So every evening
before I step through your door
I douse him with Nyquil
and drown him in Scotch
and make him watch YouTube
till he turns into stone.
Then my veins freeze over
and my tear ducts swell shut
until I can watch you smile
without flinching
until I can press against you
without turning to slush
And you say I don’t see you
you say I don’t hear you
but, Woman, when you blink
your lashes still sing like a cello
When you walk,
the stars rumba
to the congas of your hips
And when you whisper
I hear the war cries
Frieda Kahlo and Mother Theresa
with their fists in their spread-eagle hearts
And I leave your side, nightly
my bones trembling from keeping it in
and I return to my studio
to drop to my knees
and slice open my belly
just to breathe
And you’re right,
goats will turn to doves
before you see me cry
But in each of my words
if you hold them to the light
you’ll find them cut
from the clearest crystal
and filling each one
are my orphaned tears.
When You Graduate
When you graduate
Monarch butterflies
will shake from the trees
and fly loop-de-loops
sky-writing your name
in cursive
While rivers of doves
circle the stage
looking to you
like the rings look to Saturn
Picture double rainbows
glowing and bouncing
from shoulder to shoulder
as bridges of light
link everyone’s eyes
Then battleships will die
and cemeteries will sing
and the smiles will snowball
into a bride for the sun
When you graduate
the world will bob
to the bass line in your veins
and hold up to you in its palms
every tear you’ve shed.
I know this
Because it happened before,
the last time you graduated
When night turned to morning
and the moon turned to sky
and you chiseled the stone
that had grown on your lashes
Rising from slumber
with the weight of your skin
made heavy with each blemish
and depth of hue
Only those with color
could ever know the weight of it
how each shade deeper
chains an anvil to your neck
And yet you rose
though bankers clutched your hair
you rooooooose
though bearded beasts had sucked your air
I watched you burn three lumps of coal
you were told was a gift!
and glide out that door
a pound lighter than the wind
And I followed the prayer
that bled from the cracks
in your mailbox heart
To watch you take that stage
a million times over
For every time you offered your back
to lift your neighbor across the tightrope
Every time you freed the goldfish
and gave the caterpillar
room for her wings
Every time you used your fists to dream
while they spilled pales of your blood
for a thimble of beans
I felt dinosaurs jump in my chest
and dragons roaring
through the marrow of my bones
I felt your flame surge
through my bloodstream
burning wild into fire
turning me into sky
But I have a long road to walk
before I don the robe
and follow in your footsteps.
For I have yet to find the word
that you deserve to hear
or the guts to let you know
that I was always there
Which is why I beg you
Look beyond my frown
and my wayward gaze
Look beyond these nails
And these sharpened teeth
Look past my flesh
through the prison of my ribs
and see
that into my own beating heart
I carve for you
each time you graduate
Bravo.
Jeremy on the Gold Line (November 20, 2010. Issue 22.)
My sister tells me over the phone, “I’m not letting you out of this.”
“But—”
“—This is the fourth time you’ve done this to him. In a row.”
“Turn on channel seven,” I say. “There’s a twenty percent chance of rain.”
“He’s been talking about this since Wednesday, Carlos. Since Wednesday.”
All morning, the fog presses against my bedroom window, but the sun breaks through as she says this. And then I hear Jeremy, somewhere behind her, singing Rascal Flats at the top of his lungs. Rascal Flats. I don’t even want to think about what else she’s doing to this kid. I just want to stay in bed, listen to NPR, and polish off the crate of Girl Scout cookies that’s been sitting on my coffee table for the past six weeks.
“Fine,” I tell her, “but if he gets swine flu or struck by lightning, I don’t want to hear any crying.”
I have my sister drop Jeremy off at the one-window coffee shop across from my apartment, and she putters around the corner in her Ford Festiva, an hour after I get there. Before she stops at the red painted curb, Jeremy has his right sneaker sticking out the front passenger door.
“Nino!” he says to me. “Look at my shoes.”
“Jeremy! Get your jacket!” my sister tells him.
Jeremy grabs a black, hooded sweatshirt he’s been sitting on and slams the door. He races over on his toes with one hand stretched high above his head. I raise my palm to chest-level when he assaults me with a hug. I muss his thick, dark hair. “I have twenty-four dollars in my pocket,” he says to me.
“Put that into a condo,” I tell him. “Now’s the time.”
“Jeremy!” My sister leans over the passenger seat, waving him over. “You do what your Nino tells you, you hear me?” Jeremy nods. “And Carlos?” She adjusts a shimmering black coat over her tight crimson blouse and looks me in the eye, her face powdered, lips glossed, and hair brushed to a sheen. I consider asking what nightclub is open at eleven in the morning, but she peels away, honking, before either of 
us says another word.
Jeremy and I walk beneath the ficus trees lining the Pasadena sidewalk. I lean away for a better look at him, and he is about as cool as a flaming platypus, with his Optimus Prime high-tops and Super Mario T-Shirt hanging so low below his knees that I don’t see the point of him wearing pants. In the middle of a breathless ramble about Kingdom Hearts (whatever that is), he stops at a stairway that descends into a hangar-sized tunnel, exposed to sunlight at both ends.
“Whoa,” Jeremy says, his eyes scanning the empty tracks below.
“Relax, it’s just a metro station.” I continue down toward the ticket machines, and he whizzes by me on the final step.
“I win!” he says.
“Good, you can buy the tickets.”
He giggles like a cartoon chipmunk and sprints down the platform, leaving me to feed the machine and catch the two tickets it coughs up.
Once on the Gold Line, Jeremy examines the choppy firework pattern that covers his seat before plopping his bottom onto it. “In C-O-D 4,” he says, “there’s this level in a train station.”
“What the hell is C-O-D?”
“And you have to jump down on the tracks to capture the flag from the other team and bad guys jump on top of you so you have to—” Jeremy raises an invisible machine gun and “—RRDHUH-TUH-TUH-TUH-TUH-TUH—” fires a deafening stream of imaginary bullets into every passenger in sight.
“Hey,” I tell him, pushing his hands down.
“But that’s what you have to do.”
“That’s what you have to do if you want to get thrown off the train and walk.”
“I’ll show you when we get home, Nino.”
“You’re not showing me anything. Your mom’s picking you up.”
“I’ll be super quick.”
“Your mom’s picking you up.”
Jeremy sighs, and his forehead drops like he’s got a cinder block attached to it. He kneels on his seat and turns to the rolling hillsides of Highland Park, cluttered with tilted phone poles and slouching apartment buildings, flashing outside his window. And for those seven seconds he keeps his mouth shut, through the pasty hipsters and sagging teens, I notice her – a girl in double pigtails, maybe a year or two older than Jeremy, staring over her shoulder at him.
I nudge Jeremy in the back and say, “Hey. If I tell you something right now, do you think you can be cool?”
“NINO NINO LOOK! A UFO!”
“Jeremy.”
“RIGHT THERE RIGHT THERE! IN THAT PARKING LOT!”
I turn away, shaking my head, but she’s still staring. I lean toward him when he whips his hands in the air. “GOD, YOU MISSED IT!” He sinks into his seat and crosses his arms.
“I’m just pointing out the cutie who’s checking you out, but if that doesn’t interest you—”
“—Huh? What do you mean?”
“The girl in the pink coat, sitting with her sisters.” Not until Jeremy makes eye contact with her does she turn away.
I race downstairs from the Gold Line platform at Union Station, but Jeremy lags, frequently glancing back. I wave him over and tell him to hustle.
We take the Red Line subway to Hollywood Boulevard, and by the time we come off the escalators, he’s hugging his stomach and moaning.
“I thought you said your mom made you pancakes.”
“She did, but my stomach is growling.” I crane my neck in search of a restaurant. “God, it hurts so bad.” I grab the scruff of his neck and lead him down Highland to Mel’s Diner. Inside, we follow a top-heavy waitress with wide shoulders to our booth, and I order Jeremy a grilled ham sandwich and Doctor Pepper before my ass hits the vinyl.
“Why can’t we just have Subway?”
“Subway? Are you serious?”
“I want a cold cut combo.”
“Get out of here. You can have Subway any day of the year.”
“But it’s the best.”
“The what?”
“Well, it is.”
“How do you know that when you never eat anywhere?” Jeremy burrows his face into his elbow and groans on and on about how much he hates this place. I tell him not to say “hate” until he understands what the word means.
He whines for ten minutes until his lunch arrives, and when he bites into a French fry, his eyelids flutter, and angel wings sprout from his ankles. “These are the best French fries. Of all time!”
“I thought you hated this place,” I tell him, but he doesn’t respond. He just tears into his ham sandwich like it’s a wounded zebra.
“You know that girl on the train?” Jeremy says with his mouth full.
“What about her?”
“She looks like Samantha.”
“Who’s Samantha?”
“A girlfriend I once had.”
“A girlfriend? You’ve had a girlfriend?”
“I’ve had six.”
“Get the hell out of here, you’re ten. How could you have six girlfriends?” Jeremy finishes the first half of his sandwich and shrugs. “So you’re telling me you asked six girls out and they all said ‘yes’ to you.”
“I didn’t have to ask them out.”
“What do you mean you didn’t have to ask them out?”
“They were my girlfriends. I could just tell.” I laugh at him. “I could, Nino, by the way they chased me. By the way they tackled me.”
“The way they tackled you, huh?” Jeremy nods and slurps his Doctor Pepper. “Well, you still have to ask them, you know.”
“Did you ask Marlena?”
Hearing her name without warning makes my throat tighten. “How do you know about Marlena?”
“Mom.”
I can’t remember discussing women with my sister since high school. “Yeah, she’s not my girlfriend anymore, but I did ask her.”
“You did?”
“Of course.”
“How’d you do it?” I point my smile downward and bounce my head side to side, calculating the best way to tell him. “Did you kiss her?”
I laugh. “Sure, that was part of it.”
Jeremy shakes his head. “Girls always come up to me and tell me that this girl likes me and that girl likes me. Why can’t the girl just come up to me and say it?”
“That’s not how it works.”
“But why?”
“It doesn’t matter why.” Jeremy deflates. “I know, sometimes it can be a kick in the balls, but if I have to do it, then you have to.”
On Hollywood Boulevard, we hang out at the entrance of the Ripley’s Museum, trying to figure out the floating water faucet. We then peruse a fluorescent-lit souvenir shop where I try to talk him out of spending twenty bucks on a Steamboat Willie T-shirt that squeezes his paunch. I am unsuccessful. Along the sidewalk, toward the Grauman’s Chinese, Jeremy’s eyes pinball around at the women and men dressed as Dorothy, the Joker, and Captain Jack Sparrow, and without warning, a shrunken Spiderman pulls Jeremy onto a trashcan and has him pose for a five-dollar photo I have to take with my cell phone.
In front of the theater, I point out the handprints and footprints stamped in concrete, when I catch Jeremy, frozen in the crowd, staring toward the entrance. There, the same girl from the Gold Line takes turns snapping photos with her sisters.
I walk up to Jeremy and lean into him. “Go offer to take their picture.” He shakes his head. “It’s nothing. You can do that.” Jeremy stays quiet, so I nudge between his shoulder blades.
“I don’t want to.”
“Jeremy.”
“I said I don’t want to.”
I genuflect at his side. “Ask any guy that’s ever had a girlfriend - if you want one, this is something you’ll have to get used to.” Jeremy faces the ground, chin jutted, his lips pinched shut. “So the sooner you do this, the sooner you’ll thank me. Now get your ass over there.”
I pat him on the spine, and he weaves ahead through Germans, Japanese, and elderly couples with loud southern accents. I stand back and cross my arms as he raises a wavering finger to capture the girl’s attention. Side by side, the girl appears to be a foot taller than him. She steps back, crinkles her nose, and looks up to her sisters. After sizing Jeremy up, the two middle sisters keel over, laughing, while the eldest covers her grin with her fingers. He glances back at me, and I whisper, “It’s cool. Just be cool.” The eldest sister hands Jeremy the camera. All four sisters squeeze together. The middle sisters attempt to sculpt their laughs into smiles, while the girl wraps her arms around her belly. Jeremy fiddles with the controls, but nothing happens. When the eldest sister points out a button, the camera tumbles from his thumbs with a crash. The eldest sister shoves Jeremy away so she can inspect the damage, while the middle sisters hang onto each other, their laughter turning to wheezing. The girl with double pigtails is no longer in sight.
I chase Jeremy through the crowd, past breakdancers and star-map kiosks, and I knock down a one-hundred-pound Batman in high heels. Jeremy flies downstairs toward the Red Line, so I take the escalator and get caught behind a chunky family of five. When I reach the bottom, I see Jeremy pacing between the tracks to North Hollywood and the tracks to Union Station. He stomps off when I approach, keeping a distance of three car lengths between us. I follow him around in scribbles, calling out to him, but then I stop and walk back toward the middle of the platform. I stand on the yellow line and stare at the concrete wall across the tracks, shaking my head at myself. I clench my teeth and sense Jeremy standing to my right, still three car lengths away.
On the subway and the walk through Union Station, Jeremy gives me his back and stays silent. On the Gold Line, I remain standing by the door, and at Chinatown station I step out, praying beneath my breath that he’ll follow. I see his reflection exit in the tinted windows of another train as it whizzes off in the opposite direction. He stomps down the flight of stairs to College Street and follows me around the corner, up Broadway, past the abandoned Italian restaurant, toward Phoenix Bakery.
I step inside through the glass doors and wait in line. Jeremy stands nearby, his eyes fixed on a flock of white sugar butterflies nesting in the display case.
“I don’t know if your mom told you this,” I say to him, “but one day, when we were about your age, your grandma and grandpa got into one of their screaming matches in the middle of Olvera Street, so your mother and I ditched them. Just ran off without saying a word, and this is where we ended up.” Jeremy had his head pivoted away, but I could feel his eyes straining toward me. “All that money your grandpa gave us to pick something out for your aunt Rosie’s Quinceanera? We spent on fortune cookies and pastries.” I buy a bag of almond cookies and a miniature strawberry cake for my sister.
Strolling through the plaza, Jeremy surveys the graying Chinese men clustered around board games, the pagoda-shaped shops with the red-tiled roofs, and the hanging paper lanterns strung between them. I offer him a warm almond cookie, which he studies before biting into.
“That was kind of messed up what I did to you back there.” Jeremy keeps both eyes on the cookie as if it’s doing all the talking. “You have your own way of going about things, so—” I clear my throat “—I’ll never make you do anything like that again.”
Jeremy turns away, facing a cluttered souvenir shop with so many posters on the windows it’s impossible to see inside. He asks me if he can check it out.
Strolling the shop’s narrow aisles, I find myself fascinated with a shelf packed with puppy figurines the size of bonbons - miniature Dobermans and cocker spaniels, all with these marble eyes that glisten in the lamplight and hair that feels like mink. I hear Jeremy say “sorry” to a wrinkled Chinese woman with pitch-black hair behind the register. He stuffs a plastic Samurai sword into a wicker basket and his last two bucks into his front pocket.
I step over to him with my palm splayed. “Here, hand it over.”
“What?”
I rub my fingertips together and snatch back the Samurai sword from the basket. When he hands over his cash, I tell him he owes me forty-seven cents.
Outside, in front of the wishing well, Jeremy leaps into the air and twirls, slicing and thrusting his sword into invisible ninjas that back-flip and cartwheel around him. I swipe the sheath off his sword, and we spar the whole way back to the station steps as it starts to drizzle. There, he beats me to the top of both escalators with a twenty-second head start. When I reach the platform, he’s bumping fists with a toothless woman, dressed from ball cap to shoes in soiled denim. She flings a stuffed plastic bag over her shoulder and tells me, “You got yourself a good boy right there.”
When I notice the folded cash in her fingers, I shoot Jeremy a look. “Did you give her that?” I whisper.
“I forgot I had a dollar in my back pocket,” he says.
To keep myself from smiling, I poke him in the belly with his sheath, and we fence until the train heading home arrives.
We jump on the Gold Line, sweaty and out of breath. When I bop Jeremy on the crown hard enough to make him say “ow,” I spot two ticket cops in Oakley sunglasses glaring at me. I hand Jeremy his sheath as we take two seats on a bench. I close my eyes and let my head drop back against the window.
“Ha, ha, you’re going to jail,” he tells me.
“Couldn’t be worse than this,” I say, and he smiles.
I open my eyes to someone watching me from the bench across, a seafoam beach cruiser parked by her feet. With jade-colored eyes that match her sweater, she looks like the love child of Halle Berry and the first girl that made my heart bleed. She smirks at Jeremy before returning to the wine-stained pages of my favorite book – Werewolves in Their Youth. By her side is a canvas bag with Nina Simone’s face screenprinted on the front and a giant purple sunflower sticking out the top, and I can’t tell if it’s because Jeremy’s sitting next to me, or my last break-up hit harder than I care to admit, but here I am, with a mouthful of dust, still searching for the first thing to tell her.
“Cool bike,” Jeremy says.
She looks up at him. “Thanks. Nice sword.”
“My Nino got it for me.” He stands and stumbles over to show her.
She glances from the sword, over at me. “What were you guys up to today? Slaying dragons?”
“Nope,” he says. “Ninjas.”
“Ninjas?” Jeremy nods, wobbling, trying to stand without holding a rail. “How many were there?”
“About a thousand.”
“Wow, that’s a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“You must have saved a lot of princesses.”
“Nope, just you.”
The woman bursts out in a wide-open laugh. In the middle of it, she turns to me, studying my eyebrows and chin, and says, “Did you put him up to this?” I raise both hands and shake my head, afraid anything I say will escape as a squeak. She waits a second before turning back to Jeremy. “What’s your name?”
“Jeremy Carlos Santos,” he says, gaining his balance.
“Well, Jeremy Carlos Santos, I bet you have a lot of girlfriends, don’t you?”
And before he can answer, I tell her, “He does.”