Kelly Gray | 2 poems
Can you unhinge your jaw. Do you believe in body autonomy as theory. Are you from a cultural lineage that honors dead babies. Have you learned to bake bread after the mummies were stolen. Have you ever found a photograph of your great aunt, dead at 3 years old, propped up next to her blight eyed siblings and a disgruntled cat. Do you believe in linear chronology. Have you ever died, truly died, the type of death where you can’t remember whole parts of your life. Has a hand on your knee ever made you want to vomit. Have you given birth with ten people watching. Have you attended a Mizuko Kuyo in an Episcopalian church. Have you had a boyfriend confess to sexual intercourse with an apparition. Have you ever worked a job where the number of rat tails tucked into your back pocket at the end of the day is a sign of prestige. Are you for hunting wolves or against hunting wolves. Would you accept pity sex if you knew the person loved you. Have you been locked in a room. If so, who locked you in the room. Was it A. A stranger. B. Your school master. C. The government. D. Your sweet, sweet boyfriend/grandpa/daddy-apple. Can you identify when a child is a child and when they become sexually desirable. Have you ever had an abortion when it is sinful. Has someone hurt you. How many dying people have you sat with. Have you ever seen someone pull a uterus out of a body. If so, were you struck by the gleaming pink flesh, not heart nor lung but something fuller. Have you eaten bear. Have you ever been anally penetrated. Was it good and consensual or was it good and nonconsensual. Do you remember feeding off your mother’s breasts. Is someone threatening you right now. Can you hear your heartbeat. Are you in control of your body. Are you in control of your genitals. How many mirrors do you have in your house. If no one could see you, what would you do with your hands. Do you believe in property. Do you remember learning the etiquettes of death. Do you wake up every morning to count the ancestors you inherited in the tendons of your mouth. |
dying
Two: The night before the students read, you turn on the bedroom light to see the windows
swarmed by dozens of wandering white tiger moths, their wings dusting the glass, fragile antenna
looking like dark ferns worn upon furry heads
Three: When your boyfriend takes off his clothes, you still find his body part refuge + part licking
post, that grief does not dampen tendencies, and that when he whispers whore you feel young just
before falling asleep in his arms, having not made it off the couch
Four: In the small store there is a small bird decorated with bright reds and deep browns who sings a
song so clear it’s as if he is recounting the catalogue of the forest, his keepers telling you that he is a
canary, which you thought were yellow, and although the delicately crafted cage makes you
uncomfortable, you know in that moment you would keep him plus his cage, above your bed, where
he could join you in looking out at the lichen hung trees
Five: No one told you that your grandmother was in a dementia facility
Six: Or that the dementia facility used to be a psychiatric hospital
Seven: That you were in, as a patient, 31 years ago
Eight: In the same room
Nine: That she dies in
Ten: Days after you visited her, trying to catch your breath, knowing why no one told you, being
that there are no words for such a thing, that some things can only be learned in parking lots
Eleven: How you had reached for your phone to Google “do people grind their teeth as they dye”
(die) at her bedside, which felt unseemly, to bring Google into it, to laden it with typo
Twelve: Once home, you bake the perfect custard pie, sweet thick milk, gulped
Thirteen: As the record player skips a gray fox runs down the hill, and your dog, tied to the porch,
sees her, and quietly stands, then looks over his shoulder to see if you see the fox, which you do, and
the dog does not bark, and the fox looks back over her shoulder, at something you cannot see
Fourteen: One roiling moment of throat wail but, really, can this even make the list, expected as it
is?
Fifteen: During the student’s poetry reading, a sensation of pain blossoms across your chest, like a
peony opening, veins unfolding into petals falling off you
Sixteen: You hope no one can see the flower moving behind your eyes even as you
wonder can you write this poem as
Seventeen: You holler wildly for the children reading their own poetry
Eighteen: Another roiling moment of throat wail
Nineteen: As if you are filled with joy, or a lightness so clear you sound like a canary
Twenty: Shaping each tree in your throat to song
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