Two Poems
Treasure Eno
WHEN A RAPPER LOVES YOU
And when a rapper loves you, right?
He will go to the club more often than you’d prefer; inviting you to cover up his tracks.
And I discovered tonight that being a probation officer was worse than being a burden.
There is honor, not knowing your partner is disrespecting you. But awareness brings a deeper shame.
And I wonder if he ever remembers. Our 9-month anniversary, cut down to 3 heart emojis.
But I’m sure he’ll remember this Polish girl with porcelain skin. Soft grey eyes like a cat.
White fishnets and dragon tattoos wrapping around her thighs. You fall in love way too easily.
I’m so alone and it’s in my lungs. I should’ve invited a friend to keep me company. Like Claire.
But we haven’t talked much since last summer. These days when I stare at you, I feel July again.
Too often are you by the balcony railings being the star you’ve always wanted to be.
You like to watch dead presidents fall to the floor like snowflakes.
And when a rapper loves you
He apologizes through pedicure money and pathetic dates at Zara. Let’s hold hands babe
And there’s no remorse when he pocket-dials you for 12 minutes and 49 seconds
Whispering sweet nothings in her ear, in the backseat of his Range Rover Sport
But there is this broken child in a wet racing t-shirt, screaming in frustration
Using his friend’s phone to call you 27 times because this time he realizes
The captain of the football team doesn’t really have any fans off the field
So, he kisses you on the forehead, waiting in line at an Auntie Anne’s.
I don’t know how to forgive people. I don’t know how to forgive.
And when a rapper loves you
He hates when you call him a poet.
And you try your best not to but
He makes love to you through
Tangled microphone cords
Stuttering at the end of a flawless verse
And doing it over again
And doing it one more time
Holding his headphones so they don’t slip
The exhausted success of leaving the booth
You know the person he raps about in these songs
These passages. These monuments. These homes.
They’re about you. When he walks out of the booth
You realize when a poet loves you, even in weakness
You will never truly die
Oh, he may try to kill you
But you never truly die.
The King Will Not Return.
I. Girls are tougher than boys. You’re my Thursdays where the sun is warm enough to make the May wind crispy and calculated. Crispy Crème glazed donuts and expensive black leather are the meaning of life and white tees out of the plastic are the closest thing to heaven I can feel on my chest, and I don’t want to kiss you. I want to put my face in your neck in traffic and make you ugly laugh. I listen to Sting because Fields of Gold was the song my mom played on rides home back in 2002. Clocks are not only great dinner hosts, but even better jewelry thieves. There is electricity in my veins, and I hope you never put your hair up and it gets in your mouth sometimes. Sometimes boys get butterflies too. Sometimes I hope I live forever.
II. When you give your life to fashion, you are reminded far too often of the life you could’ve had. But you watch with keenness and a self-satisfied respect. 7th grade’s dirty fingernails from football gym class belong to Louis Vuitton’s lifestyle blog. The club music era belongs to Alexander Wang’s fashion show playlist. The 12-year-old Playboy Magazine phase is replaced with Monica Belluci and European models who lust for awkward darkskin boys like you too. Pretty girls with curly hair want to sit with you at lunch, and boys are going to be very upset. Christian Dior runways are a lifetime from now but punching motherfuckers in the chest for calling you pussy is a gym period away.
III. I’m going to remind you. And not the way your mother’s scent wraps around you at age 4 after you stumble over a bench at the park or the warmth of your ex-lover in 2:49am goodnight kisses. Rather, I’m more icy road. I’m December’s black ice and the road is empty and you’re doing 70 on a narrow right exit. I’m the loss of control in your steering wheel and dryness in your tongue. Water in your eyes and vision of baby brother putting on a black suit. You disconnect the Bluetooth and drive home in silence. Death blows kisses at you and you slow down at yellow lights.
IV. They say the soul of a young man is his first car. I mean, 18-23. Those years in that car are the baby steps for what kind of asshole he becomes at 24; the monster by 25. I wonder if those noble, hardworking, loyal-to-their-wives British engineers think of the $70 spent a week in premium gas, searching for rap dreams. Naïve and low-eyed college girls that pulled me closer against brooding black leather. The tears of academic probation on wood panel trim. If my soul is the perpetual check engine light of a Range Rover, I can accept the fact that sometimes I don’t start in the morning.
V. A firm handshake and crocodile sharp eye contact is the way to mine your way into the coalmine of a father who hates every nappy headed miscreant you drag home. Your father was born in a different country in 1961, and he called you words that ring in your ear like emergency sirens the night you came home with metal between your nipples. Sir I’m sorry but I’m terribly in love with your daughter. I want to have her babies. I want to dance with her on marble balconies listening to 1982 Marvin Gaye and dress her in 1995 Yves Saint Laurent gowns. But that’s too forward. Anyways, I’m a communication major.
Treasure Eno graduated in 2022. He is from North Brunswick, New Jersey, and his inspiration is Charles Bukowski. Treasure says, “The gift is realizing there is beauty in everything, the curse is finding it.”