Nothing Less Than Magic

Emily Present

From the vexation comes the pearl.

You want the disease not the cure.

The moment you stop and think, you lose.

Don't start writing, until you are overcome.

Everything you’re afraid of writing is an invitation to history.

You see the world from the lens of your wound.

Nothing less than magic will do.

– Giancarlo DiTrapano

If we drive

the winding road

enough times

we get to touch the sky.

Suck nicotine

into breath.

Let it drag.

It’s only good

when it sticks.

Let teeth speak.

We’re trying to —

for you,

or really, at &

with you.

We're all kids here.

You're the holiest one

without being too holy.

Like Jesus, Mary

Joseph, Madonna

in a sequined button down.

I don't know how

to do justice here.

I'll try with

the sharpness

of language.

Its shape.

Your edits, my voice.

Your death, my life.

Dallo strano arriva la bestia.

(From the weird comes the beast.)

We’re listening to disco

so our hearts don’t break.

Take the blood ink of a pen

but make it purple

make it blue, pink,

never red.

Prosciutto

lines our insides.

We make jokes with

the Buffalo mozzarella.

There is an overzealous

amount of limoncello

spilling in

and out of us.

A perfect antidote to grief.

There will always be joy

when we remember

stories pissed out

by tenderness.

Your voice,

a magic lantern

echoes across

a dense dark Italian sky.

A pool glitters

and flowers

I can't identify

grow.

One day we will be

in this old city again.

We are there now, too.

The teenagers are cooler

than most of the adults

we become.

Except for you.

There is a pizza

shaped like a heart.

Emily Present is a writer and third generation New Yorker currently based in Brooklyn. She is co-founding and managing editor of the online literary magazine G-MOB (formerly GlitterMOB). Her first short book of poems, Cherry Lime Gospel, is out now from Bottlecap Press.