poetry

i wish to be held by a river please

i wish to be held by a river please drowning

is something i do at night waking choked

only reminds me that air is precious i wish

to be empty a river knows the void carves it

day on glimmering day months later her path

has changed i wish for rounded stones my edges

are raw and sharp i wish for a dream woven

of reeds with which to sail the rivers please

i wish to remember this wish when i am floating

in confusing seas i wish to come safe to land

then leave

bird song

each winter convinced that i am dying

the signs point to no the crow balanced

on my hospital bed laughs i

do not laugh back it’s how the days

curl in on themselves wincing from cold

they do not wish to be out after dark

and suddenly

my scalp is bleeding it must be the bird

or you it is hard to tell men from winged

demons you ponderous you slick with oil

and rotted fish maybe i become a bird myself

gash the scalp of the child. who does not wish

to be out after dark who does not wish

to become a bird

For an audio version, visit zoeglossia

fibrotic

Fibrosis n: the thickening and scarring of connective tissue, usually after an injury

If you graft orange buds onto a lemon tree,
they grow together – a salad tree of
sharpness and sugar – or the bud dies.
Connecting two incompatible things is
harder than you would think – the body
knows this; the trees told me the same.
Maybe while I slept, a tree was grafted
onto me. My rootstock rots; Necrotic
buds flower from my heel. Sometimes
lightening splits a tree hollow like a
cave, but it still grows spindly branches.
Nobody told it it was broken or maybe it
always knew. Both are possible – hollow
things grow strangely. And yet we grow.
Trauma changes our genetic sequence. I
am fibrosed. My muscles become
woody. Trees grow thicker year on year.
I thin. But I have roots. My legs are trees,
leech nutrients? No. Drain poison. The
puckering sharpness of crabapple before
it’s boiled with endless sugar. Sour fruit
brings a longer harvest, grafted to an
apple tree, but do not try to eat them
whole. The cold splinters my branches,
cracks appear in my skin. I swapped
transient legs for permanent bark. A tree
doesn’t travel. It doesn’t need to; it knows
the forest, sends signals beneath th
floor. Swaps breadth for depth. Trees
whisper at night. People don’t notice. I’ve
been blessed with ears that hear voices
that others don’t. Or do they miss voices
that others hear? The grafted tree is
neither one nor another; nor is it both
Maybe I just dreamed I was a tree. But I
store carbon dioxide at night. Or I did.


The machine breathes for me now.