In search of protein, I city, I clop. How to stop each day from being a when & a soon. Flowers carted flower-side down. What part stem is flower. What part bud cowers to its scent. I cannot do with that voice in shambles. (Part wood, surely, is ache / part would an acre of possibility.) My favorite seat puts my breast the level of the road. A list no longer conducting my day, a tip is taken from change. That mono stitched a new body out of wellness. The budget of an ear (sound budges). The daily part of an ear.
*
Like uh-huhs. Like a series of yeses performed by the head.
*
The one day of paprika. Sack of garlic wooing a knob with a note. Dedicated to our own charades. Palms up for alms. Weep has shown up twice, unpacked by an answering machine packed then with my voice. That we try to act that material is this natural thing. The difficulty of using a public bathroom without an eye for bags. Did keeps showing up, tacked after an I. Someone’s in awe the pits of my white tee-shirt are not stained. Awe births something bad in me. Is this usual? A memory that hasn’t come as such before.
*
A destination for creamy refueling. Hello, synthetic wood of the floor. Everything is under one dollar when dollar is another name for moon. To squat there. A toast riding the backside of a day. A sea, a sea—and hardtack metaphorized into something nearer a vocalization. The wrong preposition paired with a mouth.
********
Some heart pampers a Heidi. I’m tired of the old men who get to nod. A history bullies discretion. And woe held back like a horse or its mane. To slum inside our preferred part of speech. In twenty questions, “did you, did you?” Egg in a warm boat of cheese. Miracle absent context muscles contest away. Unhitched from a fame for not arriving, a hand arrives at the warming part.
*
Niet vignette. To feel weak as a dot. But words a period outdoes. A sentence’s last resort is not. A pose in every language. To capture the attention of never. A wing that shirks a want. A nibbling collapsed into rend.
*
Just to walk slowly with someone down a road. For the week to be a swoop. It is not their talking that concerns me. But the belly of a look. The white dress. The face scattered across a dress. Bonsai shape of conversation. Why is it birds do?
Phonetic glee. What secure means today that yesterday demolished. Pigment of a wish. We recede into our appetites and each vegetable becoming a raft. Forehead that describes. For each rain managing to tag along.
Address pleading for a face. Face pleated in address.
Kristi Maxwell currently lives in Cincinnati. She is the author of Hush Sessions (Saturnalia Books, 2009), Realm Sixty-four (Ahsahta Press, 2008), and Elsewhere & Wise (Dancing Girl Press, 2008).