Marie Anne Arreola
ran by the oceanfront away from a tactical problem.
indebted, begged insight, burnt myself in toothsome blue—
destitute for a pit, for a grave.
jacketless, went to lengths I could not talk.
studied near extinct techniques. lit cigarettes with high school friends,
unstoppered pulls of wine all night in pizza parlours, doing no harm—
unbarred by sport talk. Turned my head to a device, melodious, unvivid,
stippled, every thought. Walked in disconnect or slippage.
frantic, in underwear in December, out her locked car—
deathless, flushed. Met my wife. Did not rush til feeling came like mist.
Stuttering inner blasts, I suffused. Mixed up, unacquainted, with courage.
And so now I run like I did at sixteen, all the way through Long Branch,
by the beach. Rented a little coastal house.
I want to live close to my father before he dies. True,
after a plate of sunny shrimp, exited la Pier Village.
This is the heart of the oceanfront. Rowing ahead, I turned
thirty-four. With a bit of compassion, I struggle to breathe after the run.
Listen, if meaning and pain coextend a razor-flash in the rain—
the cut bleeds now, and now, and now.
‡‡
MARIE ANNE ARREOLA is a bilingual interdisciplinary artist and journalist whose work engages speculative lyric, digital culture, and diaspora memory. She is the founding editor of VOCES, a bilingual platform amplifying global writers and artists, and a Rotten Tomatoes–certified critic. Her writing appears in over sixty literary journals across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. She is the author of Sparks of the Liberating Spirit Who Trapped Us (Foreshore Publishing, UK) and a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee.
