February 25, 2022

Chrys Tobey

LOVE POEM

My imaginary love and I have been together fifteen or sixteen years. 
We bought a house and we like to plant orange poppies and dance 

to George Michael with our dog, but we don’t have imaginary children. 
Each evening, he wraps his arm around my waist in bed and says, 

Do you feel full? I often don’t know whether he is referring to dinner or our life, 
but I say yes. I love the way my imaginary love traces his finger down 

my spine, which reminds me of my mother’s tickle backs, and I covet 
the spinach that gets stuck in his crooked front tooth. Sometimes my imaginary love 

and I laugh so hard, we fall to the floor. Sometimes I say, I am afraid and he responds, 
It will be okay. Sometimes he speaks with a New Jersey accent even though he is from 

Los Angeles. My imaginary love understands why I check the stove several times
before I leave the house, why I do the same with locks, why I sometimes threaten 

to leave. I’m pretty sure my imaginary love and I still imagine one another 
when we have sex. And even when we masturbate. My imaginary love reads Second Sex 

while I nap, as he rides his stationary bike. Unfortunately, I usually wake up 
to his ukulele. When my imaginary love is at work, he sends me the sweetest pictures of his 

penis. My imaginary love is trying to pay off my student loans. And then we 
are going to take a trip to Fiji and maybe Belize. My imaginary love cries 

when I tell him about my father. He makes lattes every morning before I get 
out of bed, and he often tells me about the time he started walking in a crowded crosswalk 

and farted. I think I am going to dedicate a book of poems to you, my imaginary love. 
At night, I nuzzle my head into your armpit and we sleep so sound, I think I am dead.

from Rattle #74, Winter 2021

__________

Chrys Tobey: “I write poetry because it makes me feel less alone.” (web)

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March 8, 2017

Chrys Tobey

FOR THE ARCHAEOLOGIST WHO HAS BEEN STUDYING STONES FOR EIGHTEEN MONTHS

You’re trying to recreate how Neanderthals made
stone tools, trying to understand something from forty
thousand years ago, trying to understand someone from
forty thousand years ago, and as you sit chipping away at
rock, I sit comfortably on my couch watching your televised
moderately handsome face, in awe of your devotion, in awe
of your dedication to a damn rock. I won’t lie, whatever-your-
name-is, your hunger for shaping stone tools makes me think
if you can give a rock this much attention, with this much precision
and this much passion, if you can desire a rock for almost two years,
imagine what you can do in bed. I’m sure you’ve already imagined this,
and pardon me for seeing sex in everything, but I assume
Neanderthals saw sex in everything, too, so please forgive my
Paleolithic impulse to want you to study the circumference of my wrists,
slope of my tongue, symmetry of my thighs. Forgive me for wanting
to fuck like a Neanderthal. No sex toys, no shame,
just eighteen months of skin on skin, eighteen months
of learning how to suck like a Neanderthal, how to sweat
like a Neanderthal, how to scream like a Neanderthal, and then
we’ll go back to being Homo sapiens and move on.

from Rattle #54, Winter 2016

__________

Chrys Tobey: “When I was a younger human, I fell in love with reading because Virginia Woolf, Sandra Cisneros, Sylvia Plath, Garcia Marquez, and Toni Morrison made me feel less alone. I think this is why I write. It makes me feel less alone.” (website)

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February 28, 2009

Chrys Tobey

THE LOSS OF LEMONS

A woman had lemons in her head. It’s not that she wanted to make lemonade. She simply had lemons in her head. She could feel them in her head the same way she could feel a star dying. The woman insisted on getting an MRI. She wanted to see X-rays of the lemons. She imagined it would be like looking at the moon suspended in the night sky. The technician gave her Bocelli to listen to. The woman smiled as the conveyer belt slid her into the machine like luggage in an airport.

The woman had no idea what Bocelli was singing. Estoy muriendo amor porque te extraño. She imagined the words were something about lemons. Te extraño, te extraño. Perhaps he had lost lemons. The conveyer belt shook back and forth, jiggled her body, as though she were on a motorboat. Te extraño, te extraño. Then the woman saw it: the ferry motoring towards Capri. She looked closer and saw her husband. The woman looked closer still and saw her husband smiling, his one missing tooth, on a tiny bus winding its way up the roads of Capri. And then she smelled the lemons. She saw the lemon orchards, lemon trees stretching for miles, wrapping around Capri like the gold ring that once wrapped around her left finger.

from Rattle 29, Summer 2008

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