Joanna Fuhrman is the author of five books poetry, most recently The Year of Yellow Butterflies (Hanging Loose Press 2015) and Pageant (Alice James Books 2009). She served as poetry editor for Ping-Pong Journal of Art and Literature.
I Have a Secret Crush on Everyone in the World
When I say I have a secret crush on everyone
in the world, I mean the earth is a fur-covered
fireball, speeding into the expanding spaces
between paragliding atoms. It means I have
a crush on the way your dangling earlobes
say one thing and your elephant, anxious
hips say another– the way you dial the same
number six times before you build up the nerve
to finish. And yes, it means I am seriously
crushing on your chipped gold nail polish,
the way it signifies a desire to make the world
more beautiful, but also the way it displays
a fuck-you approach to beauty. I was going
to email to say I have a crush on your pre-
apocalyptic recipe poems, but it’s 2016
and according to twitter only old folks
use email. Is there anything more crush-
worthy than a manifesto spelled out in
lightly frosted snickerdoodles, or an essay
floating in a lagoon-shaped swimming pool?
I have a public crush on the number 8 bus,
alfresco Thai brunches and dirty Brooklyn
swans. I love all errors and eras equally.
I have a repressed crush on New Jersey
pollution, the way its oil refineries remind
me I have a nose. To have a crush is to crush
out doubt so thoroughly its green, leathery
skin becomes your own, to taste another’s
DNA so purely Januaries dissolve into vats
of frothy vanilla egg creams, spilling into
the cracks of your spine and your loose brain
jelly, into old feet and the cold twitch of your
jaw. To crush is to slide into the neural network
where our wires are made of bird songs
and magenta-colored loss, is to feel the floor
open and the reverberating metallic shivers after.
This poem first appeared in Apogee Magazine
