Dear Poetry, a list of reasons...

Dear Poetry,

1:   inside of   (say ear

                                (say dream

                                        (say, insert pronoun, we digress

2:  fingers slipped, the poet reads a poem about war & insects   

                        (drones a diagram of how we arrived:   once i was alone

    you, outside time                         appear (how ghosts continue

3: sound edges, a fingerprint identifies,                               (of what handled

            touch in place of genocide, touch in place of where the bullet carved

4: clearly not, the treble of sound, or images rising in a throat of huddled, we secret, unsaid pressure of caught      (and to not fly, or this not skied vision, i have no idea if that’s the way it works, you reveal) 

5: once i made a promise. it went like this: i won’t kill myself until i have seen every Bergman film  

6: your thumb is never fair in the language of undoing how sure i am.

7. in your story, the woman fades. it’s not clear which of us is her. we both want and fear permanence and so, we are clearly both him, the artist painting desire into folds,       looping eyes on  (& here we churn waters deep enough

8.                                              (press into me where we mimic           your grasp shutters

9: i’ve been in this story so long, i think i am the poet, am the girl, am the one held, am the one trying to disappear, am the other pushed aside, am inside you whispering, can you hear                (i am the instrument with the mark of

                                    –you, transparent quartz

10: duality of poem’s staccato & squeezing the tip of my finger between your own

                                    (i hear what those around us secret but

                                                  w/ you           i am afraid   of what holds 

11: and the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound

12: puncture wounds caress along inseams of doubt         (touch the string softly 

                                                                                                                i stop moving

13: un/sound  :: dark eros links form, you warm against & don’t lie, i can pocket anything unnoticed, even sing memory into being, even sing a discarded collapse into light

love still, 

Megan 

Dear Poetry, Each A-Muse

Dear Poetry,

this life has been a learning of what you can't ask for/ like i can't ask for the safety of other people to touch me/ i can't trust anyone to be near me for any reason other than their own absorption/ i watch other people navigate the space of relationships/ where someone cares if you get home safe/ where someone thinks of you throughout the day/ where someone really wants to know you/ and no one wants to know/ except you, poetry, where we travel/ or the dead who keep us never alone/ or the way even when i don't want to/ and i never want to/ that's the trick of it/ don't want to know before knowing/ it's over before it begins/ don't want to read scenes so clearly/ i don't need you to explain/ don't need you to context/ i don't need to be more than 6 inches from you/ and scented i can smell where you break/ what you hide/ what you take/ there is a-nothing hiding from me/ so i can't swallow/what hurts most/ the minute i am happy/ in the space with you/ the minute it rises up from inside me/ and what you don't realize/ is long before days later of abandonment/ i read the regret inside you/ i read the fear and doubt/ your own insecurity/ the confusion of being not enough/ of wanting a back to sleep life of repeat necessary/ who can blame you/ i don't as you tamper it back down/ unconscious of your own designs/ i play nice/ act like nothing's happened/ and walk to the car/ there is the life we lead surface sided in our bodies where almost two more weeks go by before you leave/ but for me, inside the energy of what broke/ i tightrope the unreality/ barter the borrowed time of slippery joy/ it's all i know of tenderness/ a stolen object/ not designed for me/ not made for my hands/ i scavenge what i can/ i horde what i know isn't even a shadow of what i imagine/what exists inside a space of ignoring what is true is what i call care/ but close as close i museum this land that wonders/ we look like anybody else who has someone/ and i can pretend/ poetry keeps me caught in plenty/ i can imagine a just about anything i will never know/ the best part of other people is never what they are/ but the lesson they give


sometimes i think enough.    


but you don't care how much it takes.


-
M