BERLIN

Berlin, give me your obscene

Your cunt & your kunst

Perky dick & travestitties

I'll double dip & drug myself

in your bahns, buses & toot toot trams

Circumnavigate you

then dive 

in your bum

Berlin, I'm tired

Berlin, we're sucking face in the hallway with a cigarette

in one hand & an ice cream cone in the other

Berlin, the other night I had sex  

with a gangly atheist

I made sure to pray

For God to be with me as this man was is in me and I 

was no longer in me, or with me,

but sitting beside myself

Berlin, your pillows are half the size of my body

In a room full of wrinkled, white men, I say self-forgiveness 

is an antidote to shame

It's important to feel 

necessary sometimes

Messy happenings appear disguised as growth

Berlin, it's dawn & I'm damp

The room is frigid

In solitude a feeling of safety awakens

Come morning

comes mourning

It is slow

It is necessary

THE PROBLEM WITH COOL

Artists are fascinated 

with saying

In space

Bodies in space

Movement in space 

Time and space and time and space and time and space and 

Simultaneity vortex quantum

Sometimes I look at a piece and think

What the hell is happening here?

I want to confirm that we are cooing 

over this man and his monopoly

Where are the brown and black bodies in this place?

Sometimes I look at art and space out

Sometimes I'm moved 

through clubs and think

What the hell is happening here?

No one's dancing

The mood is hyperaware and broody

The concern: lazy-cool

This is good

I'm working on anger 

Anger slides out 

sideways 

sometimes

This is good

Sometimes a room

full of questionable merit

and movement

are the safest 

containers to hold 

said anger and

cradle it

in space 

SANDBAR

you should see how

ravenous i am

without you, god

a baby humpback

washed ashore

thrashing

with fuck-tons

of visible scarring

in the qur’an

heaven

is beneath

mother’s feet

yet she will not

admit me

assalamualaikum

may peace be unto you

do i have

a poem

or a binge

in me tonight

both

have promised me

heaven

IF THE AVERAGE PERSON HAS 40,000 THOUGHTS IN A DAY

The addict has 4 thoughts 40,000 times.

Which is to say, above-average.

Which is to say, clouds. 

Four-track mind.

Thought-museum. 

Numb confused for love. 

Sometimes all I want are

beautiful things

to shiver to.

I should just live in a museum. 

After the show our hearing

is numbed and we

call it love.

It is cloudy, but

it is love.

AND COMES FROM A COUNTRY FAR AWAY AS MODERATION

​

no one talks

about the rapture

how it can happen

in chains

i woke up in

bellevue the night after 

we met

a pipe​    dro    jim 

and your book

in my purse

everything snatched

but the poems

what luggage 

what luxury 

to shuffle

for days 

reading sleeping with everyone

to almost everyone 

then making each

​patient read it

aloud

it was the sex 

but mostly the cigarette that 

they loved

in new york no one will do you a favor

unless you sleep with them

night threw my sight out

​how can i make friends 

without eyes

no one talks

about the invention 

of psychiatry

how freeing it is

to have nothing 

but a black crayon

and gown

what is our crime 

but seeking 

crazy is what 

one does 

not know

*Title partially taken from the last line of "Tulips" by Sylvia Plath ("And comes from a country far away as health.")

**Lines in italics from the poem "Sleeping With Everyone" by Alex Dimitrov

 
Marina Reza was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh and raised in New York City. She received a B.A. in English from Wesleyan University with certificates in Creative Writing and South Asian Studies. Her writing has appeared in Bone Bouquet, Having A Whiskey Coke With You, and First Times: A Collection of Stories Gathered by Max Bevilacqua. Among the many substances, people, and institutions Marina is recovering from, the effects of growing up in a dysfunctional home is the hardest one of all.