Carolina
A poem about sitting in a Carolina bathtub on a steamy summer evening, popping pieces of Xanax to escape a lover’s quarrel and a towering motherinlaw, the hemlocks outside closing in too, the earnest girl sitting in lukewarm water wishing to disappear. This is the start of an end, but she doesn’t know it yet. She has wet black hair that swims in circles, mauve polish chipping on floating fingers...And the mirror...in the candlelight...like a dusky alternative, dimension unknown, blurred Oz...because of its limited vision.
Meeting
Follow the light to flat feet, wide eyes,
lips loyal over roaring. I came here to fall.
Burn the ancient, and fuck in the rubble
drunk, crazed by the mystery of what
we could be. Me through a keyhole
before we ever met: “that one.” The truth
is dawn and sparrows, unrelenting glimmer.
Let’s enact the formative creeping
of our ancestors, use our gilded bodies
to bind the sun, wooers of God
ripe, lewd. I love your gnarled
borders busy with cicadas, your smirk.
Arched backs, our burning a panacea.
So this is what it means to be a universe.
