With every cut of skin,
a circus of blood–
drops trapezing off veins
juggling moles, sun blisters
elephant trunk disconnected
from its rest– an arm
abandoned bodies may also be called
museums, the kind that are abandoned too
and underneath, dancers dancing death
a glow-in-the-dark complaint letter
The moon is my pepper spray
These mountains, they climb me
I am floating over prairie dogs
I am tangled up in trees.
I swing on the scratches–
red twigs splintering your back.
Two erasure poems
scar your chest.
You sweat glittery, uneven tattoos
mosh-pitting your thighs.
Your eyes, a car door slam
during traffic, hitchhiking off road.
When we kiss, I taste a dungeon
of scars– handcuffed and bleeding
a baptismal cut-up.
And knee pads as footsteps are not enough
And carved out broken bedsprings are not enough
And Woolf and Lorde and Hurston and Baldwin are not enough
And wound shape comparison, whistle sharps are not enough
And spoons burnt from below are not enough
And museums and meditation, not enough
And reoccurring dreams of hostage not enough
And the sex you think you shouldn’t be having, not enough
And cage. And babies. And babies in cages. Not enough.
And the reason your body odors and resistance. Not. Enough.
And hymns. And disbelief. And disbelieving hymns. Not enough.
And liberated spines and discounted lacerations and everything we choke on that cannot be deciphered. Not. Enough.
And incubators and incubating and departments. Depart. Mental. Isms.
Not. Enough.
After a certain age, you don’t have a figure; you have a body.” —Bobbie Louise Hawkins
All of this is borrowed, isn’t it? This sky with tear-dropped cumulous barely belongs to any of us. What they used to whistle at is now pillowed and pockmarked, and if you look closely enough there is a misspelled slur. What would it look like to archive all of this. Catalogue recently pierced ear, measure diameter of hole still remaining in tongue, separate sod from soil, open up the grave behind heart.
Maybe it is erasure, maybe it has become too queered. All of this, symptoms. Your lassoed hair. The cigarette burn above right knee. The alleyway behind throat. All of the arguments which grime beneath fingernails. The places on your body which could have used stitches. The audiobook of your belly.
You don’t have to figure; all you need to do is body.
Sometimes, foxes pose for photographs beneath banners that spell out Happy Birthday.
Sometimes, it doesn’t even need to be your birthday to receive a relic from a corn goddess with hair made from coiled coconuts.
Sometimes, trees plant prayers inside their branches so if you sit beneath one long enough, you may start to understand the meaning of life.
Sometimes, you need to stop apologizing and just sing (even with eyes closed). It will feel like every single letter, misdirected or never written, suddenly arriving in your mailbox. And you will feel loved and listened and raw and cut-up and cut into and kissed all at once.
Sometimes, you need to confront. Tell a stranger that secret of what you did years 26 to 34. Dispose of your body behind a dumpster where you found that blue chair. Present a barely understandable presentation on the dissertation of your trauma. Call it something unpronounceable. See who remains.
Sometimes, you need to walk until enough blisters form to replicate the mountains you gaze up at. And you will trip over at least thirteen prairie dogs and leave half your hair in a bathroom no one uses just to see how closely people are paying attention.
On the back of a poem, there is a recipe called Red Potato.
Sometimes you wonder if life is a recipe and all of this (the tragic, the repent, the lies, the leftovers) are its ingredients. And the more you breathe, the better it tastes.
for Jules and Rebecca and Jessica (summoners of wisdom)
None of this was here before, yet I can’t remember what you looked like without. All the hair on your arms got burnt somehow by July or nocturnal angels. You can call that scar a footnote to the rest of you. It doesn’t have to be tragic or metaphorical. Like that time you swam over disconnected limbs and tried to imagine the shape they used to belong to.
None of this is because of you.
One of the hardest parts about leaving is the moon is never available for a one-on-one and when you try to dial its number, all you get are the sounds of birds’ wings crashing.
Like an applause. Like the milky rust of a stubborn teardrop. Like a heat rash on the part of your body billboards tell you to flatten. Like the horizon on a fingernail. Like what happens when you emerge from a corn maze and at the end, a rainbow of crows.
Aimee Herman 