Refutation
By Kristin Kelly

In defense of my bottom lip,
I’m probably epileptic. The quivering

Means nothing. Our liaisons,
Even less. Between the ostrich’s

Heart and a body of sand, there’s only head.
Remember that. When we copulate,

Only flesh. And stench, and fuss,
And stuck. Your limp juncture,

My skin. Stuck. And upon sticking,
We fall to kiss. Kissing

Clamorous, you swear
There’s sand. Indisputable

Grit. Here, we part. Love,
I’m not a fat, awkward bird. My heart

Is stronger. It refuses to
Digress. One day, it will dress in wingspan—

Only now, it’s partial to the ground,
The underneath. It wants to dismiss the head.

My Camarilla
By Kristin Kelly

In the weeks of you
it’s become routine.
Waking, perspiration
in the crease between
Breasts and belly,
caesura of my calm.

I’m an embarrassed melon,
and you, a rat—
An unlikely pair, yet
our funny navel,
Your foot within my gut.

Sweet coil from within
this lap, where you begin
And stop, I originate
frenzied, in sweat,
A seizure of hot:
am born. Of
Calamity. Of heart.

Miscarriage
By Kristin Kelly

Here’s the truth about spring. Everything dies.
First, the kamikaze daffodils beneath me,
Their yellow bent-necked deaths.
I’d not the heart to bury,
Nor the patience for hymns.

Then the pheasants, flapping sunspots
In the sky. No arrow, no sudden firing
Of gun—only my barren presence
And they dropped, one by one, a quivering mess
Of broken flight at my feet.

Now, as if I need another reason to curse
May, this dream: a strange suckling
At my breast, monstrous and cherubic.
I am made of deserted flesh,
I am sick. A white ocean eats me up.

I wake to those headshakes of sorry,
Suicidal foliage dried to my skin. Spring blooms
Again and again. But there are worse things:
The shrill nesting song, that whistled
malady of morn. And the mothers,
With their pink coiled up worms.

Naming You
By Kristin Kelly

Tonight, fat, I wear my heart
Capsized beneath cashmere

Moth bitten—bottom out,
Alive only to sound.

Love, said enough times, becomes
Nothing, an easy task. One day

A woman could reach inside a star
And pull out little rats,

Her form inverted,
Another soul.

I’m no longer a lover. I’ve moved
Into maternal, obstinate on naming you

Hannah. This way, interchanged
Or upended, you are

Defined, still permanent, coming to this world
Both firmament and earth-tied

To syllables. Cadence. Steady song and lyric.
I’ll sing the like, only more terrible

More wise. All there and nothing but
Love, love, love.

What Goes, What Stays
By Kristin Kelly

The ginger in the yard is browning, love,
The rabbits, curling down to die.
I found my wedding ring in a cripple’s mouth.
It does not fit, it does not fit.

I’ve gone out to the ocean now,
For the shell we buried under the spot
On which we found ourselves, that queer shaped
Mound we emptied out.

Our backyard thins into the sea.
The cabbages, wind-swept and rain-sieged,
Shrivel up, the fiery shoots of carrots
Fall. Dry seaweed on my feet.

I’ve dug a hundred holes along the shore,
Still no shell. So tonight I curl up in one,
Sleep there, wake there, throw myself down
There. Starfish kiss my dust-bit hands.

The tide rolls in thick, but thicker
Am I, this sand-wet thing,
And mad, mad: a drowned dove
Half-dancing on the sea.

You may go and rest, sweet love,
Sleep in late and eat and sing
Not of me, shawled in cracked shell,
Marking our spot, our skin, no place.