make me an instrument


when is my nadir i am lamb bait

a baited lamb a lamented

bam the past a lollipop

i suck & suck the marrow epiphyte-clinging

as i write that i am aether

for a second on the subway i loose

the meaning of the word yoga yoo-gah

yo-guh

i haven’t prayed for years yet as i am blowing you prayers

interrupt my thoughts please watch over

& protect X noon moon moan koan loan lean

mean meal meat meet met wet

let lit it i — i don’t remember how this poem

is born i wear modesty like a kink



mariology

i wear modesty like a kink

i find a list on wikipedia maria of the moon

i repeat them daily a cascade of every maria 

i have ever been might be 

not yet the maria that has become known

maria of small crises

moisture, showers, clouds, cleverness

waves, vapors, foaming, maria of a parallel world

i pause to pray to the patron saint of the perfect lucite heel

for a pair of margiela tabi boots to appear on ebay in my size

fuck maria of fecundity i am cold, tranquil, serene, maria of the edge 

i am serpent’s nectar raw orange blossom honey bought

on the florida georgia border unknown maria

of desire no longer recognized



weep hole

desire no longer recognized i want to eat every daisy & dandelion

i see i want to swallow the rain as if it were your come
or drink the rain like piss if pee tasted

like memaw’s sweet tea which i pretend it does

women’s bane, wolf’s bane, queen of all poisons

so many ways of saying flower power

i am attempting telekinetic connections to clouds

but i just end up in THE CLOUD adblock

all the art bros of the anthropocene

that are having emotional responses

to the end of nature my body falls apart with the moon

but this isn’t a period poem it’s a poem period

or maybe it’s a weep hole — i’m just a weep hole helping lessen

the spiritstatic load on the masonry of whatever



Mai Ivfjäll is a bilingual poet based in Stockholm (by way of Atlanta) She is a member of the experimental Danish writing group Hekseskolen and author of the chapbook INTO LONGING VAST ROSE (If A Leaf Falls Press 2019). 

Her poems have appeared in American Chordata, hotdog, Fanzine, Odiseo, Ordkonst, Pralin Magasin, Tidskriften Provins, Vakxikon’s Anthology of Young Swedish Writers, and elsewhere.

The photograph is from Swedish artist Leif Holmstrand’s series “Asami Kannon / Whore” (2017, performed at Uppsala Art Museum). Photo: Grzegorz Fitał.