Voice with the scarf
tied round
August is of
Hieronymites, barn
attics. I am
writing notes
on how to be an angel
to speak
the name of the
cosmos. Not
to hunger. But
hungering.
Yellowingness
of the sun, not
the sun
is yellow
An idea
as it belongs
to us—
I imagined this—
blossomed and wilted
within the idea
A book is
concession
reality is an object
there is comfort
in its
thickness
ink
dissolves
and I
am inside
dissolution
this tearjerker
is like a
running nose
seasonal
ailment that
continues across
lifetimes
my hair hurts—
tonight, the moon is
alive
the sky is alive
and sleep
has sucked all
its energy from me
rain falls like a long
poem
it waters a forest
in my dream, I held
love, and asked why
he doesn’t arrive. I
was held
by his weight and
asked
if he were
dead—I felt a
unaccomplished
orgasm. He said
he was able to come
alive for a short
journey, visiting
another
lover, taking her to
Brazil. And me—
with an uncompleted
spasm and
confusion. I needed to
walk out
of the dream
There is no
waiting
there is no biting
I keep sweetness
safe from myself
How often I will awake into a
dream—and hope sleep continues—
it happens—are you dead?
Almost.
When did we meet?
When did we part from one another?
Twelve years ago.
How often have we met?
Don’t forget not to die. I was
dreaming. When you
are alive, please call me
I want for everything and hope for
very little
Are we in
August?
Yes. It is August
An hour is gut sense
continuous
forgiving. Today I laundered
my body. Imagine
all the years
we coexist. Learning
unsettles. Somber weighs a soul—
creasing something recalled
What will be the last word I ever write?
Two years ago
I cried a deliquesced
sentiment. The perimeter torn
and there is nothing left
fit for anything. In that
absence I have shaped a
post-body—an absence
of body. There is a vibration now—
the absence has
created its own body—
the opposite of a body—
a space that absence makes. Its form
trembling
and everywhere
And so self has escaped
from memory: a diary, objectivity, sensing
a parallel hew, a young woman
pulsing in meaty heat
swallowed in the module
of a moment
now inversed, pleadingly
too unsettled to
bury itself
in the ground
beyond thinking
To mistake—
to forget—
to fold away—
for the fold
to be so tight
it can’t be unpacked
I will abandon you here. Stopped after
a long walk following twelve years of
delusion, splayed out on the road—
leave a flower for me—the final
act of care can be a rose
To step inside a halo
a port, to step out quickly—to retrospect
an angel. The pale guardianship required
of a life. How the angel has a closed eye
on each wing. How the eye is a vulva
The lashes pubic hair—a ribbon through
all the parts connect with tubercle
linearity. The shadow over my pelvis
becomes clear. To touch it and rub it and
rub it. To take the flower and have the bud
multiplied. To ask for impulsiveness, for
the potential of something unknown.
I want a life shredded. This is the
invitation. Is why the door
remains open
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Katie Ebbitt is a poet/therapist living in New York City. She is the author of Fecund (Keith LLC, 2024) and chapbooks ANOTHER LIFE (Counterpath, 2016), Para Ana (Inpatient, 2019), Air Sign (Creative Writing Department, 2024), and HYSTERICAL PREGNANCY (above/ground press, 2024).