I Don’t Remember Being Born on Mars
All I do remember
are the rainbows
we found in tar bubbles
on timeless summer evenings
when the wind turned the rain to italics.
If we strained our eyes
in just the right way,
it was easy to pretend
we were locked in a staring contest
in the alley behind Cornelia Street Cafe
with a trench coat detective
that didn’t want to be seen.
I remember picking oranges
and rolling them into Mckellips Street
like little round hearts
that just dreamed
of making it into the bike lane.
Sometimes the cars would honk
and sticky guts would paint our converse.
Other times they’d just keep driving,
ensnared in a pop song on the radio
like a sea turtle wearing the plastic dress
of your six pack of Bud Light
and I’d feel a little less human
as the pollen clung to my eyebrows
the way lovers cling to the night.
It’s always raining somewhere in the universe.
I remember wringing mud water
from my baseball cap
as you dragged our go kart
from the lake of rain in our backyard.
That was the night the lake began to look less
and less like the kind of swamp
jonny quest would run through with bandit
and I realized
God is only alive if someone falls to their knees.
I don’t remember being born on Mars.
All I do remember is the way
the tar bubbles burst into nighttime
all over the driveway.
—
Austin Davis is a poet, spoken word artist, and student activist currently studying Creative Writing at ASU. Austin’s writing has been widely published in dozens of literary journals and magazines including Pif Magazine, After the Pause, Philosophical Idiot, and Collective Unrest. Austin’s first two books, “Cloudy Days, Still Nights” and “Second Civil War” were both published by Moran Press in 2018.
