All posts in poetry

To know prison is to know a world too small to hold love’s absence. // Kelly Rose Pflug-Back, For T

prison is a stillborn
two small grey hands, fists
that’ll never move nor open

i have known many hands
too small to hold love’s absence
 
 
and there is a difference
between the absence that makes
the child reach out and cry

and the absence that is
long accepted
 
 
wail and be moved all you want
i know a great many places filled
with a great many men still

and some walk the halls
taking pride in this

thirty-four men per box built for two

all of them efficiently quiet
as the sounds of your rages and of your open hands
coming together in prayer walk the halls loudly, loved

my temple, my temple

how filled you are, how holy
and uncaring you are of me

as it should be

if as i slept you were ever to stop
and wait for me
i would not forgive you

the moment you realize me you will shrink and
when these bugs stop biting i will hate you
please do everything while i’m not looking

as it should be

as it is
i am not here

the air cannot tell
what form it has, that nor this
mirror the colour

I:

for a thing to be consider alive it must meet two conditions…

1. It must be hurtling towards death, but not so fast
2. It must be ignorant of its path, but not so much

 
 
II:

as it sat up it looked around
then at me, then asked
“how do you deal with the smell of your own rotting flesh?”
 
 
III:

how does it know the human tongue?
monster
Monster
MONSTER!
it is not alive
It is NOT alive
if it Is i don’t know
 
 
IV:

“what does it mean to be human?”
“what does it mean to be human?”
“what does it mean to be human?”
It babbles

I skunk fly through pussy heavily
nights and cities I don’t care to remember
looking for trouble I can grasp but barely handle

all I want is trouble, I’m knee-deep in

something Hispanic, Mediterranean, ebony
French— Pepé Le Pew, je vis pour le funk
hardcore, je mourrai pour le funk

You wake early, but today she wakes earlier and makes you coffee, wow— you let it go cold as you’re both unapologetically late for work. Like Texas, every room feels like Texas.

The strangers in the woods must mimic squirrels and crackle with the undergrowth. They must not flinch at the cruelty of breaking golden leaves with their feet, or of interring stones. // Rigoberto Gonzáles, The Strangers Who Find Me in the Woods

we follow Moirai down as she points
at the homes of the unturned stones

                                               there
                            and there
and once there

we are as graceless as sinking pigs
but a sight less cruel somehow
breaking leaves
                             spouse and spouse
child and child
                            (there and there
and once there)

archeologists will discover a paradise
in the place no touch died of neglect

the shape of my head gives off the impression that I know something

I have left my family, my culture, my friends
I have stripped. and stripped. and stripped
but I do not know
how to leave behind the shape of my head
or such exposed lines that tell, and lead there

the educated swamp
consumes
the goose’s waist

such heavenly down
it remarks as it continues
dining

and finally
the goose gasps
the swamp gasps
finally

where one begins
the other begins
when one ends
the other ends

take me, as i am
as limp as empty, as limp
take me, anyways