LA Weekly is now taking poetry submissions. Interested in having your work posted right here on our arts blog? Send previously unpublished poems along with an image to go with it to poetry@laweekly.com. Check out today's poem after the jump.

Brushes, not sticks

By Leigh White

1.

I can't sucker punch your corneas into epiphanies

As much as I'd like to try

(I wanted you) to kiss me

A soft genuine first American kiss

Not a deep sloppy French kiss that just tries too damn hard

2.

The artist Michael Hussar

likes the way my brushes move

Hussar looks at me with fireflies of understanding

in the abandoned winter of Spring Street

He sees me, skull and all

3.

With lightning bolts

and thrift store cherubs in hand,

I am trying to swim past the Hollywood machine to get

to the meat

to the viscera

it's not working

4.

The drummer

I will never meet

walks away into his glorious sunset blvd., sticks in hand

and I walk towards my PCH sunset,

and let go of the stones in my hands

They were too damn heavy

My sun is 45 miles away

And doesn't give me cancer…

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