Mystery meat
mary under a laurelled pine
breastless
my hands wet with beige milk
a girl body by the skin
blue pearl toes seeding
in a cashberry grove full of love
drip drill with a wooden knife
animal style, mary hymns
through a smoker’s hole
I blew up my face with a sawed-off
got lapis, butter on the mosses
woodpeckers find a tulle of hair and slur
my pieces make me sad as I bite in
the grove that breeds west fox
kits oranging before reddening
I used to know how to tell time
my nines my sevens my eights
plump cigarette inchworms drawed
out old february by the smell of new food
when I go out I dress up like I’m lithe
take all the things given and pocket
I keep my pieces in a box by the gate
Laplace’s demon has beautiful hair
on the tops of his
thighs navel gazing against
the heat of the conventional oven.
Something, no, January.
Drawing out ear wax with
the slow curve
of a pocket knife flick.
He leans up,
plucks an almond
from the keydish
knuckle zippo and push
out to the trailer porch.
An american flag windsock
once so red now
pink salt ash lashes
his hands the cigarette.
He stands beside the wood
marvelous the gravel
a stretch of road leading
to the 101 and then the water.
Stepping over splinterings
and onto the pale sea brush
he kicks mud off the side
Brown eyes a flake of paint
gunshy like a dog
The sound of the sirens
by the water by the street.
He shuffles back inside,
his hands the cigarette.
Raced up cedar panels
his thumb in a stye of wood
the cat pawing at the portable
crucifix atop the pile
of tv guides and coupon savers
the wax it likes to teeth
and him throned in polyester
quiet aglow quiet aglow
he flicks the lighter
catch shag that sweet hair.
I was a liar.
At the payphone,
I was a liar.
____________
Maya Stahler is a poet from Oregon who is an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her most recent work appears/is forthcoming in Longleaf Review, Squawk Back, Dialogist, and elsewhere.
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