UNDERGROUND VOICES MAGAZINE/TYLER BIGNEY


	UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY - 03/2012

TYLER BIGNEY

Drive

Everything I wanted to say, I jotted
on cue cards. I couldn’t speak it.
Couldn’t breathe it. That’s why I stood
suffocating in my silence. Only the wind.
The wind in your hair. Ask me where
I’m going, I dare you. Ask me my plans.
I don’t know. I’m sadder than all of you.
I’m not bragging. Who brags about that?
But still, my sadness is comforting.
A cup of hot tea between my
thighs on a cold drive in the morning, going nowhere.
I don’t have it anywhere within me
to put a gun to my head. But I wish I had
that courage. The drive that
makes one amount to something.

The bottom of the world

My dreams are dreams of falling
out of the sky from a burning airplane,
into the bottom of a black sea.
The rush of air filling up my lungs,
I can’t scream in fear, or confess
my love to you, but I can kneel,
silently whisper my apologies,
spill the secrets I’ve held in the
dark parts of me. The dark parts
I’ve hid in bedrooms, or stuffed in
the cracks of hardwood floors I’ve
walked on over the years. No pennies
in my eyes, but check my pockets,
there’s some change in there I had
for a bag of barbecue chips from
the vending machine after we landed.
When you’re at the bottom of the sea,
you think things you’ve never thought,
like how you’re happy not to be buried in dirt,
how you can easily recall the girl with the
pink braces sitting in the front row of
math class, blowing a black tendril of hair
from her face. If you keep your eyes open
you’ll see how big the sky is,
how beautiful the sun is, gazing up,
miles apart from the world.

Tyler Bigney was born and raised in Nova Scotia, Canada. His poetry, and fiction appear in Pearl, Poetry New Zealand, The Meadow, Nashwaak Review, and Neon, among others.