Robin Gow
Solenoptera Cinnamipennis & Others1
There were too many of us.
TV in the spice garden. A spearmint bush watching a re-run of the Super Bowl.
What do you know what duplication? About how one species breaks down the middle to make two. Distinctions are best left up to poltergeists, not scientists.
The reception was good. Far too good. I could hear all the lives before and all the lives after. They traveled backpacked and bruised down the antennae.
Brushing my hair with a fork.
Tuning the radio to your heart beat to make sure you’re still alive.
I lift pillows like others over turn stones.
Scatter! Now! Someone is cataloging.
I always wanted a sister and a brother and knot in my DNA. Pinching the bit of string.
Once, I crawled up to the stars to feel their tingling.
I have no leg room here at all.
The next one and the next.
Leg structures, like missile blueprints, could be used to make something even more deadly. Instead, we claim each other. You are mine and I am yours. Not because of intimacy but because our blood follows the same pathways. But because when I open my mouth all the planets get sucked inside.
1 Link (New York Public Library)
Ameiva Auberi2
Under the willow tree we took turns eating raisins only they weren’t actually raisins, they were the old hearts of our great-grand people.
Tasted a lot of Tuesdays and a shoe-less summer and a wild tall patch of grass.
We should be aware of our on inconsistencies.
Sometimes I am born long-tailed. Forget to buy stamps. Other times the tail is severed and I still go searching for it.
Who knows if we’re re-united with those old limbs.
I hope not though. I never believed in whole-ness.
Watch Jesus try that on with his scales laid clear as bricks.
A mason is necessary for life just as much as a shoe maker and a mustard seed.
I always wanted to be scattered farther. I’ve lived eight or so lives in this town and I keep thinking “why why here?” Where the sunsets are cliché and the corn is mostly animal feed.
They were my legs, the willow tree arms. Long ago. You’re not old enough yet but I will tell you one day.
2 Link (New York Public Library)
Holotropis Microlophus3
Sprawl like the old dormant suburbia when all we were was boyfriend girlfriend.
Got pinned in late summer out of desperation. Braces stuck on barbed wire.
Your socks I found beneath my bed months and months and months later.
Tiny tiny tea set where we wished we were still children. How many first loves can one have?
I used to bead my body each morning. Row by row. Tan wooden beads born from the round sinewy desires of saplings. There’s too much firewood this year and not enough fire.
Burning bush says, “It’s time to move on.” I throw a bucket of water on its nonsense.
In this existence I lay often limb and dead-like. People mistook my for roadkill without the road.
The asphalt lurked beneath the old grass and brush.
Raise your Jesus hands like the bread is an orchestra. An altar turns upside down for children’s play. I take the VHS tape out of my mouth where it had been whirling.
3 Link (New York Public Library)