Harvard Summer Review


The Harvard Summer School Writing Program

issue ten, summer 2004

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Cute Deli Boys

Rachel Branwen-Dutkowski

The wasting of my

youthful eagerness:

how easily one comes     and goes.


Four eyes blink

and my knowing room thinks:


“Accelerate these languid minutes

and we might all be saved.”


                but you play such mean guitar

                backwards in my arms.


                                Why can’t you say what you mean?


My mouth trips

on your name

now.

I am forced to falsify allusions. I

avoid your eyes. I


go for a run     and breathe.


The sandpaper wind cleanses,

but never deeply enough. Like satisfaction, it


never burns enough.


We are two lusts caught in limbo

and equaling three:

        a mess of ego meets desire,


a denial of want

certainly a rebuking of

                                        the other.


And we are <its> two

poster children; blindfolded

fireflies

hurtling toward a

fast-churning fan of


pretension.


I don’t need to see your face

to know you miss me

naked,

                          tangled

in your body.


I whispered:


The monster of obligation

died with the 20th century


and what remains are

lust-hungry people with

hands gone numb,            lying

          tongues,

                  and breathless bodies,


paralyzed in terror of       a suburban myth.


Only these two bodies

are ours,

and our two lives

passing too fast

to be timid.


But you had fallen asleep.


            Stormy summer day

            The warm air is electric

            And I am still young     !

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