CavalierEternal – Immigrant Poems

[i couldn’t pick home from a lineup]
by CavalierEternal

red dirt soles
naked in afternoon sunshine

the asbestos dust
hooked to my left lung like a birth mark

knee deep in this man made lake
awkwardly wrestling a foreign first tongue

sunderland summer
by CavalierEternal

sugarloaf mountain peaks
outside our window, I will
climb her tomorrow I promise
go into town in a good shirt
you wear the new dress your
mom sent when she asked —

are you happy with her, yet?

I could have sworn you would
leave then, curse me, call old
friends, smoke two packs of
cigarettes, take the car to the
river edge where we met in
the muddy bed once.

I never said you should come
back, I folded your things in a
suit case at the door with a
note I wrote I am less than
enough to satisfy wanderlust.

you said those are my father’s
words, my mother’s curse, the
sound a door makes as it closes
is physics not proof everyone
leaves you.

i am talented at leaving
by CavalierEternal

I leave this city
with her angry barricades to you

I do not want
these humid summers
her dull sunrise doused in grey
you keep the drunken streetside arguments
for your 2 a.m. lullaby

I leave the east coast
with her tired history to you

I do not want
these hurried movements
her densely packed den of strangers
you keep the frigid winter coastlines
like a still life portrait pinned to your wall

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