13 Ways of Living Without You

by Britt Gambino

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(1)

I traveled and fucked around
the world, with every ethnicity,
every cup size.

(2)

I eat every kind of food, dress
how ever I want. I live in
your state which is now mine

(3)

and you are in Jersey
which I have escaped
along with the fear of getting lost

(4)

in strip mall parking lots, looking
for your car where I’d spend days
in the back and nights in the front.

(5)

I stopped expecting you
to sidle out of a red Honda
like you did when you’d pick me up

(6)

for an adventure. Each slab
of cracked pavement
is another day out – Delivered

(7)

from the closet and the clubs now,
I have a girl whose skin is white like yours
but tastes like sweet sweat.

(8)

She brings me into the sunlight
of Christmas Day, the Theater District, trips
to Bermuda or nights in on our couch.

(9)

She doesn’t shove her hands
down me and call it something
like love –

(10)

Our life isn’t a cop
we’re trying to outrun
in the back woods of our hometown.

(11)

I can circumscribe the holes
you left. I’m absolved
in this booth you cannot enter.

(12)

The heat in my one-bedroom apartment
is self-contained
and so is the beer.

(13)

I don’t clean up after you –
your vomit, your chaos. I sleep
all night and the phone doesn’t ring.

 

 

Britt Gambino lives in New York, NY, at the end of the universe (a.k.a. Washington Heights). Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in anderbo.com, DecomP, Xenith, and The Arava Review. This fall, she will begin pursuing her MFA degree at the New School. She enjoys brunch on a Sunday afternoon, making musical compilations, and rearranging furniture with her partner, Trisha, who has always believed. To read some of Britt’s ramblings, visit her blog at http://gritsforyou.wordpress.com.

Britt Gambino
Britt Gambino lives in New York, NY, at the end of the universe (a.k.a. Washington Heights). Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in anderbo.com, DecomP, Xenith, and The Arava Review. This fall, she will begin pursuing her MFA degree at the New School. She enjoys brunch on a Sunday afternoon, making musical compilations, and rearranging furniture with her partner, Trisha, who has always believed. To read some of Britt’s ramblings, visit her blog at http://gritsforyou.wordpress.com.

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