The Mimeograph
Huddled in the girl’s bathroom, we take turns holding the forbidden page. Its blue ink still faintly warm from the machine. We sniff its strange scent, stare in wonder at the naked bodies. Men & women in odd positions. On top of each other, on desk tops or the floor or a sofa. Even up against a lunch counter. The expressions on the people’s faces guilty and weird. Squeezed in the last stall, we straddle the toilet, snickering, hardly believing our eyes. Cold from the tile floor seeps through our thin-soled sneakers. Our hands clammy, breath coming fast and nervous, oh so naughty. We scarcely notice the sound, as if from far away, of the door opening, then banging shut.
rippling wind
wolf forty-seven
crosses the state line
New Moon
I memorize tomorrow’s grocery list: purple kale, mangos, organic yogurt, Hass avocados, a 25lb bag of juicing carrots, tins of sardines in olive oil and lemon, vanilla cashew milk, bulk spirulina, bee pollen, Dr. Bronner’s pure castile soap. My heart fully healed from years back. Outside, the earth has swallowed the moon again, and a dusting of snow has swallowed spring. I tuck my voice beneath my rib cage, pull my hoodie up. Darkness like the joy of a stone still gripped by roots. Darkness like the song between spirit and skull. Open or closed, my eyes see the same.
never married
bulbs sprout
in a burlap sack