2020 / poetry / author

EVA KERINS

ANYTHING ALIVE
…

i don’t know how to say i want your bones in my mouth
the red heat of your waxing moon pressed against me
i know it's not enough,
that nothing of me reaches deeper than your rib cage
but i’m trying,
i’ll always be trying,
to make you laugh and love me back
i’m starting from the beginning, sweetheart
here i am relearning the taste of your wrist beneath my tongue
here i am rephrasing the want within me
the hunger is back, sweetheart,
and there are no more lines between me and the monster
i tried to tell you earlier,
but the monster took my teeth
will you forgive my fangs?
will you keep looking at me as more than something spit-up and half-digested?
i’ll be good in all the ways you need me to be,
and we’ll keep making love just like this,
with your eyes on mine in a spinning room
we’ll keep making amends, the way we always do
forgiving me,
forgiving you,
forgiving this table between us.

BLOOM

…

in the summer again, thinking of all my empty
hot steam and sweat and hot steam again,
too much and never enough
my lips pressed to the cool white tile,
mouthing words i beg to be written for me
waiting to feel again,
waiting,
always waiting
there is something of tenderness in us,
aching to the gentle blue of music,
speaking to the faint outline of my stars in the darkness,
claiming each and every one of my ribs for itself
i’ve taken to the living things,
imagining pothos moving through my veins
and turning me from blue to green,
the soft orange bloom of aloe just under my tongue,
learning to love the chipped terracotta of my shoulder blades
how long until i count as living, sweetheart?
how long until my name means only me,
and not the fragments you left behind?
until then, i’ll keep all that you left in my mouth,
choking on the sharpness you taught me to swallow.

EVERY ATOM BELONGING

…

in the ocean-ache of morning,
i try to remember what it is like to rise
i search the soft smoldering sheets for the bones that came loose last night
but can’t find a way to tell you that i left one of my collarbones
in your jacket pocket last week
i shut my eyes and pretend the whole world has melted down
to a point where i can stomach it
i am sick of unloving myself into shadows
make me a church hymn with bones inside it

god spoke to me last night from the pulpit
asked why we chose not to tremble
is there ever really a choice in terror?
he laughed like you laugh,
all marble teeth and red velvet tongue
and i remembered your eyes opening this morning

of course there is.

HUM-IN-BIRD

…

call me light in ecstasy,
the sound of your harsh breathing,
the heat sinking claws into my spine
i put the old sunflowers in the compost bin,
their steady decomposition,
a symphony played backwards
or the night sky reshattering itself
i make tea with two spoonfuls of honey
and mama calls me hum-in-bird
always searching for something sweeter
I write faith on the shopping list
spell it out in cursive, the way i never write
i’m not making sense anymore
but i haven’t made sense for a while now
i crave the small, dark ways we love
have my jacket,
get home safe,
two quarters and four dimes and six pennies
in every tip jar
i broke open the bark of my being,
revealing the soft gray decay of existence
could you pull me from the earth?
my roots gasping and clinging,
showering dark red clay,
screaming and screaming and screaming.

SYMPHONY NUMBER NINE IN D MINOR

…

teach me that the shape of my hands is a sunrise,
that god is something small and blue and buried
i’m choking on the taste of flight,
on the soft dark bones of living
i tried to resurrect it but all my aloe died
from the weak black rot of my ribcage
and all other half-healed things
i am writing you my essence
my two a.m. showers and all my wet hot gasping
life wants more love to drown in,
so i love you
i want to love you well
let us walk into the rain and become the warm beasts of being
shadowed by the swaying cedars and the forked white tongue of lightning
let us be love in thunderclouds
all of our discordance refusing the sky
leaving us unbound, unlivable,
echoing and echoing.

EURYDICE

…

i sat down and tried to write this,
i really did
tried to talk about lonely when it's flint-gray and sharp as lightning strikes
the unlit street lamps of her earrings,
the gilt blue-green of her laughter,
the dream of her hand silver-soft in mine
it's not sharp enough, you know,
which i guess is a way of saying there’s no blood behind it
all empty sonnets and no aching
i am attempting to cauterize all the shadows of my body
(i don’t know how to speak of my darkness without devouring it)
how do i hold you?
how do i give you all my pieces and have it resemble the whole?
i don’t know anything but your body at night,
arching into my body
so here is all the poetry with no blood
all that i am unable to write
here are all my bones and blood

i love you
i hope i’m enough.