a long-distance poem written by Rebecca (Rebel) Diaz and Aimee Herman
through the war(p) of this forearm, there will be an exam of historical emphasis
the snow will soon reach the rooftop, temperatures will teeter from negative 40⁰ to 80⁰
why do you not sit in an upright position when being plummeted with the sounds of saxophone made famous by the chapped lips of jazz, by the stretched out cheeks of it, by the callused fingerprints all up in it by the/ by the/ spit in it
it is moving into us/you/me / back to them / and then around
it will reach the heart and preserve it in frost, these limbs will go limp in this windchill, breathing may be shallow and frozen slowly, malleted by reflection
what does it mean to overwhelm the mayflies falling out of life so quickly like the way kisses ghost our face
the moon is a belly in the sky, bloated, bruised, contracting, the sloughing off is coming
there will be no autumn this year. only winter
and in this winter, expect musk—subsisting on exhales freezing against the water’d shivers of body
they tell me, it will break blood vessels near the four chambers, childhood may leak into the surrounding tissue, it may turn from black-and-blue to [un]biblical.
does it matter that you sawed off two syllables in your name in order to arrive at the truth of your bones
this is a process of infusion, of boiled cartilage letting go of identity and refashioning its calcium into pumping
when monsters grow in trees, dripping sap of carbon dioxide and road fumes and when you run out places to hide from the mirroring
jar up your heart with a symbiotic culture of podunk and populous, find tent in Brooklyn backyard or a sundog along the Red Lake River and roast poetry soaked whiskey over teeth
amen
Aimee Herman 