volta OR she says children are born by being shoveled out of wolves’ bodies, but who does the shoveling? are all wolves, therefore, females; are all females, therefore, as vicious as wolves? tell me, my heart, what reality is
—i drain the nightingale
shove you in & through the moan
tendering
interior of poem these trained claws
pulling skin from—how do you say—the way a tongue celebrates its obsession
accomplishing verbbody/ verbbody/ verb
wetverb/ wetverb/ wet i drop
your bones from sky get marrow
starve what desire i have
violence
i have so much violence
another!
another!
bring me another nightingale
volta or we make guilty
either it’s moving too fast or everyone is in shock
it’s not a metaphor it’s a bomb
no a video
of a bomb no
a video of a bomb threat no
the news
the news the news it gets
faster&louder&idk
when is real when
rhetorical (choice) except the dead
the dead the dead are real (rhetorical choices)
arrogance is always
(the) right of gods the right of first refusal
load
the tub with the pig’s blood
they’ve collected so much the pigs
& their blood
time is/ the life/ of it i’ll/ fear
my fear is terrifying
i didn’t want/ any of this/ in the poem yet
I DIDN’T WANT/ ANY OF THIS/ IN THE POEM YET
i’m my own femme fatale—
i rot. my rotting roots
take hold!
humiliation breaks even
a domesticated bitch
or is it beast pretty
pretty
guardian—trickster! i know you
like to watch my need this need my needless
control
—death (luck side up)
—the world (luck side down)
—the empress (luck side up)
the owl folds her body around my head
as if weightless scaffolded offering protections
o sweet chariot unlatch yourself!
i’m going down let at least some element of the sacred survive!
theseus who has two fathers by what right
do you forsake
your sheep here
they ate
each other (mystery suffers hope) this
futuremodel meaning i can
never be
wise or know
the future should i
be terrifying
fanny howe: if i freeze, one foot poised to go forward, to land on the path, i will at least
be living in the present and the past will know it
robin blaser: nothing distinguishes me ontologically from a crystal, a planet, an animal or
the order of the world. we are/drifting together
octavia butler: there’s no end to what a living world will demand of you
rihanna: bitch better have my money
am i/ futural
what you wanted
like any wild lion i love to fuck
inspecting the arrows was it revenge.
let’s get out of control
let’s get out controlled—
some newviolence tries to fuck her yet—
she has had meat
there is surprise
as she fucks newviolence
i smell overwhelmed.
—who knew
there’d be so much blood so freeflowing in one fish
would you
raise me to death’s wound
to love immortal
to attend the will of my great daughter
to be good
—what instrument
of other feeling unfastens impetuous
harsh thunder!
burden me instead with abandon
& sorrow
what is comfort anyway!
i like to win.
some unheroically woundedwound
some slipofvtongue sister—
the scales.
the scales got everywhere
then the smell.
well my best friend says if it smells
like murder it probably is
murder.
rub the horses down
we all need
hard exercise (the parade of an allusion
of an elusive adjective (an illusion))
whose power is a terror to my own sanctuary
is that all i am/ a repository
—what can’t
be housed (in parenthesis)
what (housed in parenthesis) can’t
be had—
i return to the imaginative
discomfort of being.
i return to the imaginative
discomfort of being/ seen: trust
no vulture
that would not eat the entrails
Leia Penina Wilson is proudly Samoan. She loves baking, mixing drinks, and tree-watching. When she’s not doing these things, she reads trashy paranormal romance novels and plays Magic the Gathering. She teaches in the MFA program at Chatham University. Her second book, splinters are children of wood, is available from Notre Dame Press. You can buy it here: https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268106171/splinters-are-children-of-wood/. // @rakishheir
Banner image by Olivia Cronk
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