glimpsing

i’ve never coined a jukebox;
there is an innate safety in an unattended
body—these bodies like wildfires. this oil
smear. acrylic mirror. these traceable
skylines falling limp and we are falling, limp.

we are paper snaked painting blood
onto canvas, bodies of red thread and stardust.

this is me, flipped inside out.
my malnourished wounds, decorative cemeteries.

clementine chin drip, sweating into yourself

this is my inner creature      my blue hot
my amber lense         my immobile radar
my fabricated scratchings

we are all things tiny.
we are nothing at all.

***

this body & other cemeteries

there is no fourth wall

you don’t exist yet
you are nothing i am
nothing we don’t exist
we were never here we are
ocean lessons

we are architecture, forgetful
sex and the dust in cathedrals
we are performers—spot lit
in red i trudge as if stuck, slowly
wavering as if i am

wading i
am still underwater
waves up to my neck

& i know genesis is just
everyday gestures

swallowed whole bubbles rise &
burst               water stills i
am a silhouette of thirst

am illegible     am a theory

i am hidden in resin i am
scanned copies of my breasts
i am the copy machine’s
roaming light i am a vessel

for wind          moss   whispers

.            moths             unlit matches

but where do moths go when there is no more light?

***

Savannah Slone is a writer, editor, and English professor who currently dwells in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Split Lip Magazine, Paper Darts, The Indianapolis Review, Glass: A Poetry Journal, Crab Creek Review, FIVE:2:ONE, Pidgeonholes, decomP magazinE, Crab Fat Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Hobart Pulp, and elsewhere. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Homology Lit, as well as the author of An Exhalation of Dead Things (CLASH Books, 2021), Hearing the Underwater (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and This Body is My Own (Ghost City Press, 2019). She enjoys reading, knitting, hiking, and discussing intersectional feminism. You can read more of her work at www.savannahslonewriter.com.