Angel Rosen
I SHOULDN’T BE DOING THIS
I just want to feel brilliant and I will go to such extents
for that window to be shattered, oh
what I would have done in other centuries to be studied
woman at the forefront, but otherworldly, begging to the unshrunk
stomach turning knobs and naming things
my essence: a riot and a clenched fork
the hole in the palm, unruly, flies assessing the carcasses of thursday
the wind comes in from the west and forms a language
I say I’ve gone wild
the wound is a trench, I sink badly into
eating me is one of my demands
but start first with Medusa
worship performed at roadside, the church is a truck jack-knifed, blizzard coating
the frowning thing its headlights dimming
and I hear the songs of freshman year playing out of its radio
what I wouldn’t do to be worthy isn’t much
Just tell me I’m brilliant while you’re sweeping the debris
while you’re boxing up the one-thousand untouched books
while you’re trying to find the tissues in the middle console
Is this enough? This surrender?
I shouldn’t be doing it this way
Forfeit sobriety, forfeit the ease in the pit of my chest,
all for one nonsense moment that dries me out, hangs me upside down,
the broadcast a forewarning like my wound sizzling over
the shove sticky and hazardous
a wooden spoon with burn marks
falls to the floor and reminds me that I’m nothing more
than a person who tends to things and what is so brilliant about that.