are you running to someplace that
beckons you? in the wild yonder, where I
crackle, the lungs of me blooming silver in the
dimness, riverbed gone out. should we meet then at
evening? under coxcomb and swollen,
filled with asking for each other, asking whether
goodness can be taught, whether this is right. and
how do you heal yourself, my dear?
I remember what you are—scab, totem,
juniper on the side of this house. do you make me
kind? would you like to reach between my doors—
lurid as a milksnake? I break every promise
made once to myself, in the darkening, dark
now, and my blackberries are burnt. I put fire
on the table, the rosewood made soft and
pinkish. I long to be among your
quiet plants, your neck unclothed, your wrist and
rhubarb, the red thorny vine coiling,
smoked in you—a heat that pulls, dragging anyone
toward it, toward being raptured,
unmade by your finger tips, undone my ribs,
vertebrae—scraped, used like a
whetstone. it is scary, to live like this, under the
x-ray machines, everything visible in my
young chest—a threshold. enter me between a
zillion bright rooms, all at once hushing.
originally appeared in Noble/Gas Qtrly
Emily Corwin is an MFA candidate in poetry at Indiana University-Bloomington and the former Poetry Editor for Indiana Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Gigantic Sequins, New South, Yemassee, THRUSH, and elsewhere. She has two chapbooks, My Tall Handsome (Brain Mill Press) and darkling (Platypus Press) which were published in 2016. Her first full-length collection, tenderling is forthcoming in 2018 from Stalking Horse Press. You can follow her online at @exitlessblue.
