Megan Falley is a member of the Intangible Collective and is currently holding yard sales in an effort to move to the city with her Chihuahua named Taco. She has competed on the collegiate level with the SUNY New Paltz Slam Team (2006-2010) and the adult level with the Intangible Team (2010). She has written two chapbooks, Cricket Fuel (2008) and Autobiographical, Erotic Non-fiction (2010). Her writing has appeared in Static and Other Lungless Things, published by Penmanship books, and The Stones Throw Review. She is a professional blogger for the SUNY study abroad program, and really enjoys the movie Harold & Maude. www.meganfalley.tumblr.com

Four Poems (June 20, 2010. Issue 18.)

What the Hour Hand Said to the Minute Hand

At 7:35 A.M, you lay your tired body on mine
before peeling off, like a slow band-aid.

At 8:40 you sprint home and make instant coffee.

At 9:45 we finally drink it, cold.
I finish your leftover half.

By 10:50 you are already breathless.
I live for every time we overlap.

When 11:55 comes I spend the entire minute convincing you to stay.
You never do.

By noon I put my hands on your shoulders and say, “Baby,
you’re getting thin. All this running in circles and barely sitting down to eat.”

At 1:05 you tell me that while you were gone,
15,300 babies were born.

At 2:10 you don’t say a word,
just come in and kiss me for sixty seconds straight.

At 3:15 we sit quiet, listening to rain falling everywhere
in the world at once: all 15,000 tons.

At 4:20 we pull a little from the tight joint I keep behind your ear.
You do not inhale.

At 5:25 you meet me for happy hour.
My neck already salted, a lime wedged in my teeth,
a shot of tequila sitting on the bar.

At 6:30 I hear the ticking.
I count your heartbeat like seconds between thunderclaps.

By 7:35 I can see you in the distance,
each second a tease until you drape over me.
We always love quick and you never let me hold you.
I dream of drinking you through a straw.

At 8:40 you watch my beard grow 0.00027 of an inch.

At 9:45 we do not speak.
Too many people have died since we last met.

At 10:50 we pray for a meteor,
at least a clumsy kid to spill sugar in our gears.

11:55 is my favorite.
We’re only apart for mere minutes.

But at midnight you’ll apologize sixty times
because it will always be like this.

At 1:04 AM I am already sleeping.
It’s exhausting loving someone
who is constantly running away.

When Dracula Went to the Pawn Shop

He tried to barter his teeth.
“They’re sharp enough to puncture rubber!” he bragged.

The young cashier lifted her brow,
pointed to her ex-lover’s car and said
“Prove it.”

Dracula wrapped his mouth
around a tire till it flattened
like road kill.

“I’d also like to trade this mirror,”
said the vampire.

“It has never worked for me.”
Only the girl’s reflection stared back, frowning
that he could never see himself beside her.

Finally he said, “I have this appetite. This thirst
for the red wine of humans. I would trade
it for anything else. I am incredibly alone.”

Just then the cashier disappeared into Dracula’s
cloak like a bull to the matador.

She sprawled all she had to give across the counter:
her neck as long and fragile as a swan’s.

Ocean City, Maryland 1997

I built a sandcastle for a jellyfish and told her that in the new kingdom, there are no sharks or piranhas, and everyone is kind. My brother marched over, a blonde monarch with a plastic shovel, and sawed my queen in equal halves. He laughed at the putty.

In the souvenir shop, there was a colony of hand-painted hermit crabs. The ones with less glamorous topcoats sat in one corner, an omen for high school. “They can switch bodies at will,” said the cashier. I paid with crumpled allowance and thought: wouldn’t that be nice.

At 2:48pm I would rush home to tell my new friend about gym class while painting her with a toothpick and “Melon of Troy” polish. One afternoon, the top was pushed off her cage and she was gone.

Perhaps she fled to a crab casino, to dance for a famed crustacean opera singer, or declared holy matrimony with a barnacle. Maybe she grew too large for this shell and went to live in the conch of God’s ear.

Once Our Pet Died, We Had No Children.

When our hamster Gus died
in a disfiguring accident on the wheel,

I used a baby tooth for a tombstone.
It was too small to fit his whole name.

I left off the “G.”

In my backyard, I have buried “US.”
It is time you pay your respects now.