I use my phone as a mirror. I have zero likes. I like
mud-rose & jewelweed & you. you left my body cells
astonished. I am missing you something fierce in these
greenfields & oil fields & fields of scary love I do not like.
such a long way from this little while together. with you,
it is a presence or absence of claws—your hands that might
injure. desire holds me like a knife. what do you want me to
say to that? you say back. I research what larger animals are
most likely to kill me in the surrounding areas—most likely
horse or dog—& you think my hair is alive & it is. I get so
impossible with emotion, blighted, startled like a starling.
I order the latest version of a cave—tight, dripping—where
I can disappear into. I remember we enjoyed getting down
low in the bull thistle, downloading each other. you sent:
remember this? in your message request. the attachment
failed to load, inside the glow screen, silken.
originally appeared in Grimoire
Bio: 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.
