Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shrieks by Christopher Citro
Our Beautiful Life When It's Filled with Shrieks
Christopher CitroI’m doing a balancing act with a stack of fresh fruitin my basket. I love you. I want us both to eat well.We’re not allowed to buy blackberries anymorebecause they’re mean to their workers and youread left-wing news sites. Till when? I asked and yousaid nothing. So that’s one healthy food off the list.I’m still buying pineapples and you’re still eating them.I guess you’ve never seen the websites about those.Nobody in this supermarket knows that I am a puma.This morning our cat rolled on the floor showing meher belly which I leaned down and rubbed.Beneath a backyard pine tree the neighbor’s catwas eating one of our cat’s moles—at least the moleswe rent from the landlord for her. It’s so complicatedstaying alive sometimes. The voices of the collectionagencies on the answering machine sound menacing.They’re paid to sound that way and they’re not paidmuch more than the people they’re menacing,which can get you thinking if you’re the sort ofperson who likes to think about that sort of thing.Other people subscribe to adventure cyclingmagazines and read about men who rode acrossTurkey in the late 1800s before anything washappening in the world. Before cantaloupesprobably existed. When you could get an honestwage for an honest day’s blackberries. When weloved like fierce mountain storms, with the bloodof eagles in our hearts, exchanging grocery liststhat just said you you you you all the way down.
MARGINALIA
1.
I like the life we make together. When you tell me to not let my blood sugar get too low, then whisper I’m stubborn under your breath when I said yes I’ll just finish this one. When I tell you to put your feet up and you decide to do some yard work instead. When we look at recipes on how to make coconut buns on YouTube. When I begin a conversation with you’ll never guess what happened and you’re already putting everything down and getting comfortable on the couch.
2.
It’s so complicated to be on earth. In some parts of the world, some people are not allowed to love each other, and it’s ridiculous and terrible and I want to call you right now just to say I’m glad you exist.
3.
The other day you told me it took a while before you were sure. It ached a little, the knowing. But does it matter if I got there first—everywhere I turn there’s just you, now and always.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in If We Had A Lemon We'd Throw It and Call That the Sun by Christopher Citro, published by Elixir Press, 2021. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“If We Had A Lemon We’d Throw It and Call That the Sun by Christopher Citro was chosen by Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis as the winner of the 2019 Elixir Press Antivenom Poetry Award. Lee Upton had this to say about it: “In Christopher Citro’s If We Had A Lemon We’d Throw It and Call That the Sun, the kinetic, continually surprising lines of poems contend with the largest questions. The poem title ‘An Emergency Every Day of the Week’ suggests the sense of threat that veers through these poems in the midst of their bracing comic energy. For Citro, so much depends on the angle at which we view our experiences. Musing on our daily disarrangements and the ways we attempt to lower the temperature on our worry barometers, he makes wildly inventive, exciting, vital poems, working sideways to reveal what we really ought to see at last.”” (Source)
ABOUT CHRISTOPHER CITRO
Christopher Citro is the author of two full-length poetry books: If We Had a Lemon We’d Throw It and Call That the Sun (Elixir Press, 2021), winner of the 2019 Antivenom Poetry Award, and The Maintenance of the Shimmy-Shammy (Steel Toe Books, 2015). In 2025 he’ll have two collaborative poetry chapbooks published: The Box We Put the World in to Keep a Corner From Shattering (Aureole Press), co-written with Steve Castro and Dustin Pearson, and I Wear a Top Hat When I Go Into the… (more)
Read more poems by Christopher Citro • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Follow on Instagram • Twitter • Facebook • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
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