She's Gone Again
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The gone girl, she rarely visits
and when she does, there are five feet between us. Several bodies, you and you and you, all of them you. The last time you severed, where did you put her? The one I am most often looking for? Which of the three of you, knows so well my devious middle and begs to, at least, put a name to this collision? Your sharpest hand finding my dangerous center, and it circles the drain. The midnight, the moonlight, its spit and swallow. It’s not exactly what you think, but you know that. Last week’s lover, another faceless name carved into your miserable arm. How believable that is to a machine? An absent mind to spread like butter on someone else’s bread but you still catch the flies. Rotting, rotting. You say you are a spider (ha, ha, ha)… the silver spider with its silver web (ha, ha, ha)… shimmering when the wind shakes you and your hostages. Dinner comes loose, a few flies now too far from the web, the famished ego (ha, ha, ha) drinks itself from the inside again. |
ANGEL ROSEN
is a queer, neurodivergent poet living in Pennsylvania. She writes about grief, friendship, taking up space and mental illness. She collects card decks and watches a lot of RuPaul's Drag Race. She has two poetry collections available, with the intention of soon working on the third. |
I have never asked much of the machine,
better known as the actor, the graduate, the sibling.
She is so well-oiled now.
There is never either a full laugh nor a full moon,
that would be too much of a heinous deduction,
you cannot possibly give in,
they cannot know what’s on the other side of the cards.
You count your viruses in the meantime.
You brag of a handful of aces,
I include myself. I ask “do you have any threes?”
You bravely tell me no.
I can see the other two of you and
I’ve written out the hypothesis of you.
You shuffle the cards by laying them out in threes,
oh, everything here has a middle and
it could be the Jack,
or you, still.
The gone girl,
a pale child with a compass. She is fourteen,
then and forevermore, the white lines about her
are delicate in every stretch of this lace.
Climbing trees to see if the grass is khaki elsewhere,
but she aches for the Father and his arms
so, she abandons the winter sometimes, for his warmth
and the counterpart’s summer splinters.
Imagine there is a Birthday Party, the friends
bring string but no presents. They bring
cheers, but no voices.
This makes the most sense, to this vulnerable mouse,
unselfishly burrowed into the comfort of
her inevitable division.
The machine is easier to witness,
the sturdy adult, a few loose wires
(red and blue, but the bulk of her black).
She performs and holds the keys and
she eats the meals and puts the money
into slots, it goes there, it goes there.
This actor, so admirable, this
“look what I have made with my hands”
but it is not everything you’ve made with your hands,
but how badly she says her hands ache,
busy, busy bee can’t be caught in the web of her
own doing (ha, ha, ha).
A machine, sisterly and naïve, everybody’s person,
what an offering. How you fit into Tuesdays.
Sometimes your friends die,
you where the sheep’s clothing to the wake.
The gone girl, fosters fetishized gloom,
the indelible first love’s
beating and his seven-foot-tall threat.
Every man’s the Father if you bleed and he notices.
This infant stage of seduction
the arsenal of aubades and initial stitches
what purity was strung up near the moon
in the window and left for the rest of the year.
While the first two topple, the girl and the machine,
the third fraction observes for sudden instance
any affair that must be mandatory agony,
she takes the cat on the leash and the men to the sea.
I’ve known her for a decade, but I’ve known her as three.
She knows better than to sharpen her scales around me
I am less stunned by them than other ones here
even if I’m not immune to the floods and the
eyes without pupils.
The siren,
I have said much of it before. She is the most severed thing,
long in every sense and too often enamored-by.
She is all piercing and decorated with ink.
Men at her bedside throwing in nets and hooks,
recording the worst of it, hoping to capture
a glimpse of her song.
The cards smooth out on the bed
and I ask her again “do you have any threes?”
I have all four, but I know there is more,
because she, and she, and she beside me.
“Go fish.”
I win with aces.
Maybe she let me win to discard the illusion
that I wasn’t cataloging the act,
she could’ve beat me,
with the king, or the jack,
or the second deck
or a more believable disguise.
I win every time, because we have met
in all phases, not in a net or on a web.
There is never another set of threes.
We are both curious record keepers
who can’t shuffle well enough.
better known as the actor, the graduate, the sibling.
She is so well-oiled now.
There is never either a full laugh nor a full moon,
that would be too much of a heinous deduction,
you cannot possibly give in,
they cannot know what’s on the other side of the cards.
You count your viruses in the meantime.
You brag of a handful of aces,
I include myself. I ask “do you have any threes?”
You bravely tell me no.
I can see the other two of you and
I’ve written out the hypothesis of you.
You shuffle the cards by laying them out in threes,
oh, everything here has a middle and
it could be the Jack,
or you, still.
The gone girl,
a pale child with a compass. She is fourteen,
then and forevermore, the white lines about her
are delicate in every stretch of this lace.
Climbing trees to see if the grass is khaki elsewhere,
but she aches for the Father and his arms
so, she abandons the winter sometimes, for his warmth
and the counterpart’s summer splinters.
Imagine there is a Birthday Party, the friends
bring string but no presents. They bring
cheers, but no voices.
This makes the most sense, to this vulnerable mouse,
unselfishly burrowed into the comfort of
her inevitable division.
The machine is easier to witness,
the sturdy adult, a few loose wires
(red and blue, but the bulk of her black).
She performs and holds the keys and
she eats the meals and puts the money
into slots, it goes there, it goes there.
This actor, so admirable, this
“look what I have made with my hands”
but it is not everything you’ve made with your hands,
but how badly she says her hands ache,
busy, busy bee can’t be caught in the web of her
own doing (ha, ha, ha).
A machine, sisterly and naïve, everybody’s person,
what an offering. How you fit into Tuesdays.
Sometimes your friends die,
you where the sheep’s clothing to the wake.
The gone girl, fosters fetishized gloom,
the indelible first love’s
beating and his seven-foot-tall threat.
Every man’s the Father if you bleed and he notices.
This infant stage of seduction
the arsenal of aubades and initial stitches
what purity was strung up near the moon
in the window and left for the rest of the year.
While the first two topple, the girl and the machine,
the third fraction observes for sudden instance
any affair that must be mandatory agony,
she takes the cat on the leash and the men to the sea.
I’ve known her for a decade, but I’ve known her as three.
She knows better than to sharpen her scales around me
I am less stunned by them than other ones here
even if I’m not immune to the floods and the
eyes without pupils.
The siren,
I have said much of it before. She is the most severed thing,
long in every sense and too often enamored-by.
She is all piercing and decorated with ink.
Men at her bedside throwing in nets and hooks,
recording the worst of it, hoping to capture
a glimpse of her song.
The cards smooth out on the bed
and I ask her again “do you have any threes?”
I have all four, but I know there is more,
because she, and she, and she beside me.
“Go fish.”
I win with aces.
Maybe she let me win to discard the illusion
that I wasn’t cataloging the act,
she could’ve beat me,
with the king, or the jack,
or the second deck
or a more believable disguise.
I win every time, because we have met
in all phases, not in a net or on a web.
There is never another set of threes.
We are both curious record keepers
who can’t shuffle well enough.