Thaw, part 2

Below are the final six poems of my mini poetry collection Thaw. If you haven’t read the previous post (Thaw, part 1), I recommend doing so before reading these. Hope y’all are having a lovely April.

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sober

at first I thought the void
had shrunk: I sensed walls
in my fingertips.
now I understand 
I have given up 
my individual oblivion
for the collective, 
and that what I sense
is the humming skin
of others

---

the pit

all we do with
our tongues now
is make fists
discourse good for
nothing but dying
in its own arms.

each night I work
to snake away
the fruit stone in
my throat. too
many plums.
this is what I get.
too many hard
talks unhad.
a stomach only
for the soft stuff.

let me go
into the blossoms
ivying my palate 
but do not go.

leave me
alone
turning phrases
but also
meet me at
our common soil.

is it so simple that this
is where we re-
converge, fingertips finding
their likeness
in the black earth.

---

as the water

the cat has unfurled, and the mornings smell
like cut grass still heavy and wet
with life. fingers swell and eat
their rings. tis the season of being
waterlogged. the live corpse reminding the ordinary
mind it will someday be the ocean.
do not forget, do not forget to make
arrangements. my cat lets me pet what
I guess would be her ankle. there must be
some mistake, these are bird bones
so thin and delicate I am tentative
despite the fur and the whole, healthy
flesh, only lightly touch for fear they
will shatter, I mean won’t they? I mean,
they will. somehow they hold now though
despite probably being toothpicks and a
whole bunch of glue. promise to meet me
out there, as the water, when the time comes.

---

soft spots

it helps to think of these moods
as at the mercy of the moon,
like tides
of an ancient, troubled sea
birthed and birthed and birthed up
the beach

when there is
the evitable descent
into why—why 
is the past still
anointing
me why must
I bear it I 
whose fontanels long
ago closed
I know I know I know—
at highest tide, when the waves steam
with seething, I try
to remember.
I am earth
of the earth.
every moment is
inherited.
what will we give
to each other.

---

spine

if I had no need
to mourn
the good things
what
would I be
left with

something like love
for the big, clearing
wind
?

nameless, the fallen
flowers stay
vertebrae
scattered along
the path

and the drifting cotton
just that

---

I wish I could rain

or thread myself through
the cottonwoods
or glow above the creek
water like big, slow bell sounds
or the twilight parts
of my heart

when the storm comes it comes whole,
yellow sky to
dripping hydrangeas

as always.
as what it is.
a live lung, full, then
empty, then
full,
                 then

---

—AKB