From I’m From the Storm
After the name corrodes the engine
says this: open the envelope carefully,
water the flying-out air
with licks you left halved under
the girls’s lucky nickel. The
method you wander through echoes,
the wander you echo through leaves
a started nest unstarted &
then started again.
~
As real as the purple plate covered in
the remnants of the tires you blew
out on your way to a benchmark,
this checkered flag folds into the
working brain of a cat. There are
sounds that become circles when you
hold them beneath the wheelchair
wheels. This is what the runt of the
litter writes with a single bared claw
across the dead cactus: There
are places to go to hold hands.
~
for Stephanie Subway
When I’m sad,
my mind hears
songs from the lion.
After 13 days of
writing blood in
the wet cement, I
stretch my finger toward
a tomb & poke a hole
in the tomb. Marbles
spill out, follow
a lizard to its skin.
What’s sad is the
geshundheit of your
skin. What’s sad is.
~
I’m cold.
I will not borrow
your skin, slip
your mitten feet over.
A piece of lettuce on my face
a cartoon pig holds an umbrella
of real tripe over.
For my next poem
I’ll need to borrow
your sheep, make
you an owl
out of a beard.
I love you.
Gesundheit.
~
I found a baby at a funeral
& lined its hands with lipstick,
black lei around its neck, neck
to the tent stakes. A dozen
crabapples creak under the
gesundheit shoes & everybody
whispers what to the werewolf.
A baby in a black lei stares
at another baby in a black lei.
~
I found another baby
at another funeral
lined its hands
lined its fingers
lined its arms
lined its belly
lined its earlobes
lined its blotchy
umbilical cord
with lipstick. 
Julie Doxsee is the author of two books, Undersleep (Octopus Books 2007/2008) and Objects for a Fog Death (Black Ocean 2008/2009), as well as several poetry chapbooks. She was born in Canada in the seventies and has roamed widely since then. Currently she lives, writes, and teaches in Istanbul, Turkey.
Mathias Svalina is author of the chapbook Why I Am White (Kitchen Press). He recently won the DIAGRAM chapbook contest, and his manuscript Creation Myths will be published by New Michigan Press in Fall, 2007. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he co-curates The Clean Part Reading Series. He is also co-editor of Octopus Magazine. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Blackbird, Jubilat, Fence, Bridge, and Denver Quarterly among other journals.
|
