Brandi Homan
3 poems
**
I Am Falling for You America
I don’t visit my sister when she’s recovering because it reminds me that she’s been depressed for a long time. I just can’t watch a movie with her, eating takeout and pretending it’s fun, when I have a hundred things to do because I’m trying to make something of myself.
*
I have to think my family needs me to make something of myself. This way, I can sit outside the Laundromat at 9:30 in early fall, writing and eating a Blue Bunny ice cream cookie, and call it work. This way I do not have to visit my sister, can wash the laundry a month overdue.
*
On the way here, there was a stencil on the sidewalk with “I am falling for you” below it. I’d seen it before and thought, oh how cute, sometimes I love the city. Most of the time I don’t. Cities are where people who are trying to make something of themselves end up, drinking bottled water and sitting outside the Laundromat.
*
Above “I’m falling for you,” the picture was of two smiley-faced buildings holding hands. How cute, I thought, I love this city. But then one had a plane flying into it and the other had smoke coming out of it. Is this sick or wonderful? America, I am falling for you.
*
Last week a pitcher drove his plane into a Manhattan building. I’m so tired of being afraid all the time. As if that’s a problem for a middle-class white girl trying to live a collective dream of being Brad Pitt, or married to him. I am terrified less than most.
*
When Diane Sawyer interviewed Brad Pitt, the network showed footage of his trip to Africa. How strange that starving Ethiopians knew Brad Pitt, but they did, had pooled the day’s bread to make one large piece like a giant cookie from the mall. Their eyes were wide and they were clapping. Brad Pitt, I am falling for you.
*
My ice cream cookie is gone. I’m outside the Laundromat writing and calling it work because now my fingers are cold. I’m tired of trying to become somebody. Once, waiting in a doorway with MaryAnne, I was hungover and wanted to eat too much, a pizza, a giant cookie. Then she said I mean, what did we go to war for? And looked at me.
*
To free the Iraqi people I said, and the look on her face reminded me it wasn’t true. I knew it wasn’t true too. I saw smoke from one building and a plane flying into another and was tired of being afraid all the time, as only a middle-class white girl trying to become somebody can be. I am falling for you, America. America, I am falling.
**
Me and You and Everyone We Know
When we ask for what we want and get it, we’re terrified.
*
Do I look well to you guys? A lot of the time I wish I were the younger sister and someone else had to go first. My sister does that a lot, the nervous shaking, but stops when I hit her. Same with cracking her knuckles.
*
I had a scrapbook like that, where I’d cut magazine pictures out and organize them according to rooms in the house. I miss knowing my neighbors, even if I didn’t like them, or if we didn’t talk that much.
*
What have we done? We can’t touch each other anymore, not that we did anyway.
*
Christ I hate submitting poems. Art is a business like any other and we take ourselves too seriously, everyone so weird and desperate and alone. Is that the secret to everything?
*
The photos on the wall remind me of Teen Beat’s Ralph Macchio, Corey Haim. Remember stringing beads on safety pins? We hung them on our shoelaces, wore them on jean jackets. I got a hope chest for my sixteenth birthday.
*
At a party once Tim Dwight lit Kristy’s arm on fire.
*
I love how some couples instantly act like they’re together. I don’t know how to be together and not together, which is why I’m not good at dating. Austin and I can look at each other and brush our teeth, smiling, and it doesn’t feel hokey. It just feels like we can brush our teeth together.
*
I’m serious. We don’t really want what we want. We want the wanting. You think you deserve to feel that pain?
*
Maybe I’ll have kids so I can build tents out of sheets and furniture. At least we are all together in this. Is that what kids are, more to be in “together?”
*
Let’s lie on our backs. I love it when people join others who are acting crazy, like when Miranda helps hang the bird picture in the tree. I didn’t even say a prayer for that bird I watched die at the airport.
**
Dear Evil
Landlady, when you fixed my roof, it leaked two weeks later. January was warm this year. I don’t care what you say, I only had one “beer party.” It was the goddam Fourth of July. No, you can’t have my goldfish tumblers. No, you cannot buy them. When I was mugged outside the building, you charged me to change the locks.
**
return to sawbuck 1.x
**
Brandi Homan is the author of Hard Reds, forthcoming from Shearsman Books in 2008, and Two Kinds of Arson, a chapbook from dancing girl press. She earned her MFA at Columbia College Chicago and is editor-in-chief of Switchback Books.
**
I Am Falling for You America
I don’t visit my sister when she’s recovering because it reminds me that she’s been depressed for a long time. I just can’t watch a movie with her, eating takeout and pretending it’s fun, when I have a hundred things to do because I’m trying to make something of myself.
*
I have to think my family needs me to make something of myself. This way, I can sit outside the Laundromat at 9:30 in early fall, writing and eating a Blue Bunny ice cream cookie, and call it work. This way I do not have to visit my sister, can wash the laundry a month overdue.
*
On the way here, there was a stencil on the sidewalk with “I am falling for you” below it. I’d seen it before and thought, oh how cute, sometimes I love the city. Most of the time I don’t. Cities are where people who are trying to make something of themselves end up, drinking bottled water and sitting outside the Laundromat.
*
Above “I’m falling for you,” the picture was of two smiley-faced buildings holding hands. How cute, I thought, I love this city. But then one had a plane flying into it and the other had smoke coming out of it. Is this sick or wonderful? America, I am falling for you.
*
Last week a pitcher drove his plane into a Manhattan building. I’m so tired of being afraid all the time. As if that’s a problem for a middle-class white girl trying to live a collective dream of being Brad Pitt, or married to him. I am terrified less than most.
*
When Diane Sawyer interviewed Brad Pitt, the network showed footage of his trip to Africa. How strange that starving Ethiopians knew Brad Pitt, but they did, had pooled the day’s bread to make one large piece like a giant cookie from the mall. Their eyes were wide and they were clapping. Brad Pitt, I am falling for you.
*
My ice cream cookie is gone. I’m outside the Laundromat writing and calling it work because now my fingers are cold. I’m tired of trying to become somebody. Once, waiting in a doorway with MaryAnne, I was hungover and wanted to eat too much, a pizza, a giant cookie. Then she said I mean, what did we go to war for? And looked at me.
*
To free the Iraqi people I said, and the look on her face reminded me it wasn’t true. I knew it wasn’t true too. I saw smoke from one building and a plane flying into another and was tired of being afraid all the time, as only a middle-class white girl trying to become somebody can be. I am falling for you, America. America, I am falling.
**
Me and You and Everyone We Know
When we ask for what we want and get it, we’re terrified.
*
Do I look well to you guys? A lot of the time I wish I were the younger sister and someone else had to go first. My sister does that a lot, the nervous shaking, but stops when I hit her. Same with cracking her knuckles.
*
I had a scrapbook like that, where I’d cut magazine pictures out and organize them according to rooms in the house. I miss knowing my neighbors, even if I didn’t like them, or if we didn’t talk that much.
*
What have we done? We can’t touch each other anymore, not that we did anyway.
*
Christ I hate submitting poems. Art is a business like any other and we take ourselves too seriously, everyone so weird and desperate and alone. Is that the secret to everything?
*
The photos on the wall remind me of Teen Beat’s Ralph Macchio, Corey Haim. Remember stringing beads on safety pins? We hung them on our shoelaces, wore them on jean jackets. I got a hope chest for my sixteenth birthday.
*
At a party once Tim Dwight lit Kristy’s arm on fire.
*
I love how some couples instantly act like they’re together. I don’t know how to be together and not together, which is why I’m not good at dating. Austin and I can look at each other and brush our teeth, smiling, and it doesn’t feel hokey. It just feels like we can brush our teeth together.
*
I’m serious. We don’t really want what we want. We want the wanting. You think you deserve to feel that pain?
*
Maybe I’ll have kids so I can build tents out of sheets and furniture. At least we are all together in this. Is that what kids are, more to be in “together?”
*
Let’s lie on our backs. I love it when people join others who are acting crazy, like when Miranda helps hang the bird picture in the tree. I didn’t even say a prayer for that bird I watched die at the airport.
**
Dear Evil
Landlady, when you fixed my roof, it leaked two weeks later. January was warm this year. I don’t care what you say, I only had one “beer party.” It was the goddam Fourth of July. No, you can’t have my goldfish tumblers. No, you cannot buy them. When I was mugged outside the building, you charged me to change the locks.
**
return to sawbuck 1.x
**
Brandi Homan is the author of Hard Reds, forthcoming from Shearsman Books in 2008, and Two Kinds of Arson, a chapbook from dancing girl press. She earned her MFA at Columbia College Chicago and is editor-in-chief of Switchback Books.
