Jason Bredle

BREADFRUIT

FANCY BUTTONS

EARTH NIGHT

BREADFRUIT

Sometimes I write my name on my underpants

to remember who I am and sometimes I write

someone else's name on my underpants to forget who I am.

Like how one ends up in this place?

You stare out a window fifty hours a week,

sometimes people come and dig holes

and other people come and stare at the holes.

Sometimes they appear satisfied,

sometimes they appear angered by incompetence,

sometimes they stand around the holes in groups of five

and discuss. One time a person

knelt before one of the holes.

Like how sometimes I wear your underpants?

They're far more comfortable, not to mention sexier,

than my own. Sometimes it rains here,

sometimes someone finds

a dead person floating in a pool,

sometimes the ambassador to Guyana is shot in a car park.

I'll never forget waking in a bathtub, blood in my mouth,

how we circled the savannah like the sun.

Some things about me:

I like breadfruit, curry, plantains, roti, and chickpeas.

My favorite rice is jollof.

I like to take showers, I like to romanticize

cocaine and suicide, I like to ride in vans

across mountains thinking I'll die

at any moment while listening to music

full of sexual euphemisms and talking to guys with cutlasses

in a language I don't understand.

Can you see what's inside me?

I like to remember my cat, when we were younger,

sitting on our windowsill.

I sometimes wonder what phulourie tastes like,

I sometimes think about a story I once read

of someone drowning, his last words, I'm giving up now.

Like how you stare out a window fifty hours a week?

You think, my situations are a direct result

of my previous actions. You think,

I'll jump here.

You think, I'll pretend it's 2005 for two years.

You think, can you always count on me?

You think, I'll jump one more time.

You think, how much would it cost to fly to Port Louis?

You think, why do I dream so much of air and water?

You think, I can't wait to go home, take off my underpants,

cross out my name and write Roger.

FANCY BUTTONS

I’d like to get the names of my body parts

tattooed all over my body so that if I were to ever fall apart,

I’d be easy to reassemble.

Like how they used to make the kaleidoscope?

Head here arm here chest here, no no the legs attach to the pelvis

not the chest! I miss nights like that,

the way you’d call, say fantastic news from India!

New mangoes on the way

and they’re going to blow our minds!

How I’d wonder if one could fool a real bunny

into mating with a fake bunny.

The ears attach to the head not the hands

do you copy good buddy?

Imagine a girl who travels through time and sleeps with boys

of various historical eras, you’d say, and you’ll have imagined me.

Like a bunny? Like sleeping with a fake bunny?

Knees don’t go there they go here right here right here!

I miss nights like that, disassembling

and reassembling myself again and again,

falling in love with pilots, fancy buttons,

how I miss them!

Now it’s only the glow of whatever light is out there,

lighting the path from this place to the next.

I’d imagine sleeping with a guy from medieval Europe

might be dangerous, but not as dangerous as a guy

from 1950’s middle America!

No no no the ears and the nose go on the head

and I do miss those nights,

when I’d hear my neighbor arrive home and his daughter yell,

Daddy, let’s play! How I’d think, kids man. Wow.

I already know what you’re thinking.

Someday our planet will have homogenized into one

massive culture. I realized this myself a while ago,

in my living room, listening to airplanes approach

one after another after another after another after another.

The eye attaches to the chest not the ear?

That’s when I imagine aliens will discover, pillage, and kill us.

Yes, how I do miss those nights,

the way you’d act on roller coasters,

how you’d wear goggles on waterslides so I wouldn’t feel lost.

EARTH NIGHT

Right now I’d love to be sitting on some cool guy’s chair

while the cool guy sits on a nearby couch with his girlfriend

lying casually over him,

perhaps the red lights from the Chinese grocery

across the street

shining through the window over her pale skin,

her black hair, her silver earrings,

and we’d be talking about something cool

like how when you think about the infinite number

of galaxies out there

it really puts your smallness in the world

into perspective

or like how so many people in this country

buy into a capitalist hierarchy without even realizing it

and it saddens us

and makes us struggle with things

we shouldn’t have to struggle with because in order to survive

we need to place ourselves within the capitalist hierarchy

or like how not enough people

see the importance of feelings anymore,

they just want to produce and consume

produce and consume produce and consume!

I wonder if we’d be wearing sweaters.

I imagine the cool guy in a brown sweater

and me in a green sweater

and piles of books and notes and bottles everywhere.

We’d laugh a lot

and later I’d remember everything we’d laughed about.

I’d wonder, can the cool guy tell that his girlfriend and I

were once in love?

Maybe I said too much when remarking upon

her bracelets and her green eyes,

how she can drape her arm around a thing

so languidly,

as if we were back home again

that last summer we spent together

before placing ourselves into different lives.

The way she’d take an ice cube

from a cooler and run it down the nape of her neck!

The way she’d hang her arm out a car window!

But things happen

things happen things happen oh how things happen!

You’re eighteen, it’s so hot outside,

you’re sitting on a back porch and she just had the abortion.

You move north, she moves west. Yet still

you find each other years later, in the Chinatown apartment

of a cool guy

having cool conversations

about how we must look to aliens who watch us

watch boxes each night

showing people throwing oranges at each other,

showing people plotting to throw other people off of an island

and showing people dedicating their lives to things

that don’t exist.

My girlfriend would never be interested in those conversations

is what I’d say if I hadn’t met you

is what I thought to myself last night

on the back porch, and I felt bad for having never told

the cool guy’s girlfriend I felt that way so many years ago

and I felt even worse for having never told you

I feel that way now.