⌘ Deja Vu
Deja vu, from the French “already seen”
is a strange phenomenon.
A deja vu just unfolded in front of me,
a slow motion wormhole of a moment
collapsing in on itself before my eyes, implosion.
As soon as I said to myself,
“I’m having a deja vu,” it started to dematerialize,
deconstruct itself into another moment,
release its hold of illusion on time and space
and fold itself back into this seeming reality in which I
wake up and write poems into the white space of cyberia.
The scattered objects on my desk,
dog-eared poetry books,
a blinking light,
more poetry books,
envelopes holding letters,
uncapped pens,
a wilting orchid plant,
my eye movement on computer screen,
the cold of morning radiating off the window next to me,
frozen hands pounding out keys, joining words,
as I start another poem,
and there it was,
a deja vu,
a split second of life on repeat,
the intersection of short-term and long-term memory,
a moment that I have had before,
or a moment that I have dreamed of having.
Deja vu is a vacuum,
it is time and space trying to catch up with itself,
it is circular truth trapped in linear enforcement,
it is prophecy and permission unveiled,
it is glimpsing deeper in unraveling,
it is peering from out of body, seeing as Soul,
it is consciousness that remains nameless,
but we have all felt it, haven’t we?
When a moment unfolds and shakes you from the numbness,
and you know you have been here before,
you know, for a moment, you are where you should be.
⌘ Are you flirting with me?
If I answered your question truthfully,
“are you flirting with me?”
I would tell you how I have already turned
your bottom lip into a poem a hundred times,
shaped your chin into a place to rest my kisses
and taken your hands into my steeple,
make a prayer out of me,
turn me inside out and holy underneath your touch.
Yes, I am flirting with you.
Yes, I am trying to make you see
without seeing that I have loved you
for more days than I can remember to count.
A thousand times I think of you,
whisper your name into the quiet space,
that is the invisibility of this desire,
that is the longing that stays with me,
but is barely opening up to you,
because I have taken the time,
I have paced this wanting,
I have formed this yearning out of lust and air,
and now it is a real, breathing thing,
your body, almost the trembling ground
I can maneuver with my fingers,
your voice, that answers back and asks,
“are you flirting with me?”
So much more,
so much more than flirting,
I am flirting with danger, with uncertainty,
with a growing hope swelling in my chest,
to think that we could make a fire out of our willing bodies,
out of our vacant mouths howling for a lover
we have yet to know in each other,
my untethered heart
is moving toward the fencepost of your standing
up for something as beautiful as this.
Yes, I am flirting with you.
Kai Coggin is a poet and author living on the side of a small mountain in Hot Springs, AR. She holds a BA in Poetry and Creative Writing from Texas A & M University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, Lavender Review, Broad!, The Tattooed Buddha, Split This Rock, Yellow Chair Review, ANIMA, Elephant Journal, and many other literary journals, as well as anthologized in several international collections.
Kai is the author of PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants Publications, 2014). Her poetry has recently been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Bettering American Poetry 2015. She is also a Teaching Artist with the Arkansas Arts Council. www.kaicoggin.com
