Only one way. The house. The body. What hisses, what gnaws—how to see what I’m meant to see. When is time inconsolable (and the world, there is no hurry)? The river made of eyes, the lake made of bone. The thick underneath, the waterline, mud that breathes, […]
You need nerve to spread your life out on the floor: mother’s handwriting, tombstones, mammoth bones, some branches cut from a tree. On the island off the coast— unfiltered daylight, untreated summer—the makeshift boats were a silent protest. So I went to church— I mean the […]
The moon cracks itself over this city and probes the streets. I want to steal its plasma and learn what pulse keeps anything awake. […]
I gathered shirtfuls of shells, pleated circle skirts of red plastic & copper, spent casings, the way some children gather corpses tumbled in by the sea. Bedside dressed in teflon & lead. I spent my nights, ears pressed to cold metal, searching for water & heard only the […]
Blessed are the stargazers, for I will multiply their light {as the krill in the sea that feed my leviathans—limned fluke & fins, streamlines of tinsel} Blessed are the moonstruck, for they will not miss my face {nor will they miss the push-pull of tides in the […]
Tie the body. In knots. Against itself. How to undress the horizon-line, the glint of after-fog when a pair of geese split the low clouds loud and angry. I measure their wing-beats, the musculature heave of their effort, the sound they make against the over-ripe air. Not […]
Sawnie Morris’ collection Her, Infinite was winner of the 2016 New Issues Press Poetry Award (judge: Major Jackson). Her poems have won a Poetry Society of America Bogin Award and appeared in BAX: Best American Experimental Poetry. Recent publications include Poetry, with a poems forthcoming in Puerto […]
Do you remember time-outs in your room for flapping your trap, the copy of How to Win Friends & Influence People slipped under the door, the dinner cold until you’d read it whole and came out a better person, the little pink radio that the black Russian […]
I give you what I don’t have. Strawberries in the mouths of birds. Unopened pomegranate blossoms devoured by ants. Fruit dropped from unpollinated vines, all varieties. Tell me the last time a flower wasn’t the shortcut to desire. One year in the middle of my […]
A tall man wipes ashes from his lips. “I’ll pay you,” he says. “If you’re worthy.” From the lamp of his skull, a steeple rises. Roaches seek warmth in the dead bells, while cherry blossoms burst their green corsets. My mother at the end of […]