Guest Poet: Freddie Tavakoli

In the Tall Grass

12. 

we are laying in the tall grass, heads together.

cassiopeia, there. and cygnus flying above it.

you know i will not remember, and you will say it for me

again and again. i ask you

do you prefer the sky or the sea?

you say the sky, but you love all of it, it doesn’t matter.

do you think we’re made of the same stuff the stars are?

13. 

i cut my hair short. you dyed yours blond.

we wade through cattails and whisper

under red-winged blackbirds.

you see a shell shuffle beneath the water

and dive. splash me, i laugh. the sun beats down.

14.

i start to trust your face, the roundness of your nose and

sharpness of your eyes. your rolling laugh.

you draw the stars and the black holes for me.

you teach me about the ways the animals love

and the ways they die, and all those things in between.

15.

again, in the tall grass, you ask me if i remember

where is hercules? i’m silent. you show me again

and again, and again. maybe i do it on purpose, i

couldn’t tell you. if i do, i swear it’s an accident.

16.

your hair is all black, now, but still curly.

cross tattoo on your collarbone. i fear i’ll never see you

again. you lift me over your shoulders and i feel

as close to the stars as you are.

you play your guitar in the tall grass, and sing.

i let the ticks bite me, let the mockingbirds dance.

it’s the way animals love, and i suppose

it’s the way we die, too.

18.

you shaved your head, but it’s grown back out and

the cross tattoo has set into your skin. your eyes are still

made of silver, you know, and ice—immortal.

i am made of flesh and blood, i’m sorry, but you

are made of the same stuff the stars are.

---

Love is Redundancy

“Love is redundancy,” some say.

Others disagree: “it’s a hunger.”

I want to kiss you in every possible way.

I’ll cook your eggs how you like them, every day,

scrambled, with cheese and butter.

“Love is redundancy,” some say.

I drink your morning breath like my Earl Grey,

touch my lips to your eyelids and feel them flutter.

I want to kiss you in every possible way.

Before we sleep, you read me poems: Frost, Plath, Yeats, 

look at me between lines, eyes soft in wonder.

“Love is redundancy,” some say.

Feel your breath on my neck, listen to the blue jays

every morning, watch the sun, watch your slumber.

I want to kiss you in every possible way.

I taste your sweat when you ask me Stay.

It’s that: you’re my comfort.

“Love is redundancy,” some say.

I want to kiss you in every possible way.

---

peeling a clementine

I've been trying to master the art of peeling a clementine.

it’s hard — I always puncture the flesh where I should be peeling away the pith.

I’m practicing for when you visit me next, when

the trees have finished blooming and there is green

everywhere, again. I’ll peel one perfectly for you.

then, you will think, “What angel peeled my pith so perfectly away,

saved me from sticky fingernails, fragments left between my teeth?”

and look at me, and answer your own question.

I’ll admit, the fantasies have been getting out of hand—

sick, awful things I could never tell you about: the villanelle I

wrote about how I will cook eggs for you for the rest of your life,

and the dreams I have of us growing old,

sitting on stumps and moss,

peeling clementines, together. oh sure,

I dreamt again of your skin on mine, of whatever the human equivalent

of a clementine’s pith is—yours and mine intertwined.

when you woke up, I handed you a clementine,

peeled poorly, I’ll admit, and

I told you about this dream, although I left out the other ones.

---

Freddie Tavakoli is a sophomore a James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Freddie studies rhetoric and spends their free time in pursuit of birds.