Ashley 8/30

STRANDS OF MEAT.

Emma, 8/30

All words in this poem can be found in the song “Lost in the Light” by Bahamas

help me,

I’m just

bones now.

even

my lovers,

so lost, all

rattled things

hold my own

night, take

my light.

what thrill. 

I too held words

before this.

Emma, 7/30

under 

the vines

a catch 

of the light, 

a garden

below us

and we grow,

slowly,

while all things

become

still

Emma, 6/30

left on clark, right on spring, brackett, dow, congress.

repeat every sunday, the familiarity of the west end

sound more like our strangest hymns. you’re right-

the coffee here isn’t as good. there is no community like ours,

no anarcho-poet vegan pancakes. new sleepy hands,

the church I’ve replaced you with. how sincerely you wished

I would make music of you, you gentle yet hungry child. 

you constant flicker, you fire-mouth. you must have known

our neverland wouldn’t last- every fool grows up eventually.

and weren’t we something like that? half-wit, half-lit

fireflies, circling each other’s sweetness in the night?

Emma, 5/30

the sun had come down

and vermont begun

to paint itself with night.

in the genesis of moonlight

I relearned the language

of your hands

Emma, 4/30

The eternity between us:

an interstate, the horizon

just out of reach; the possibility

we needed setting. All we could 

do was watch. I was never brave

enough: never bright enough

to know you the way light does.

I wonder what you thought of me:

coward or sunset, crook 

or ever-burning city. Lovable

in a way you could never learn,

a light that flickers in your hometown

while you write me from colorado.

While you miss me, I hope.

Ashley 7/30-

Not sure when the sky changed
it may have always been this way.
A little bird keeps telling me
it has always been this way.
I've just been walking around
with my nose on the ground
searching for a clue.
They're in the air
they've always been in the air.
You can feel them as they hit your skin
and crawl into your pores.
Seeping. Deeper. Deeper.
As they mingle in the strands of meat
between outside and inside-
you know. You've always known.
You can feel them now in your bones.
With all of the other clues
that you had ignored all year.