9/8/2017 Poetry by Eve KenneallyA Grasp Everything I do, I do for a body. I don’t know whose. I crave markings for the same reason I can’t find my way out of new buildings: I need identifiers. The familiar half-slants when I dream; my house is no longer my house, though ultimately I wake and own nothing. I’m not particular. I just want marble countertops to cry on. If a person has breached their gaze for me, it lasts the length of a greeting – then leans fast into ritual, to steer me through; even as it weakens my lungs, even as I leave earlier to miss the same train. This whole city a humming swollen lip of June, as ritual, to keep us circling. To keep us thinking, I am so alive it stills me. Every mannered, droning part. In the Hospital, Time is a Stillness Slow warning. Stranger strapped to gurney for hours. I know this chair. My grandmother says, I’ll regret covering up these shadows. She says, You have to know how they build their cities before you visit. We say, Eat. We say, We’re sorry. Those couldn’t possibly be birds. I skip out on visits & lose most of my time: a slow trance in reverse, each moment its own steel crawl. You do these things til you dull, then you do them again – a dreamless gathering. I see this thing I throw my body into & am all animal, wired wrong. Instincts: half-survival, long numb. I lived in my head for years. He was calm & spoke to me, an old dialogue. It made me sick. Another Elegy I remember that nobody drowned: collect things not to read them. Part of learning how to think is in trances, is knowing we have no right to be here. Half-spells brought with measure. This can’t be survival – blood, nearly human. It was your face I wanted; something of significance. A wet towel rolled and sapped of color. The smallest men look backwards. The rest we deserve. Even if it’s pretty – even if it’s around the neck. Some Might Call This Progress If this is a poem about loss, let’s end it here. You dance, I lay unseen, litter wrapped my ankles. There’s something I need, in a post- romantic way: thieving is not insisting. Look in a mirror. You’re going to thank me for it. Deer fever aches sharp & ready, the borders exposing all those faces at their picnics wanting everything but window screens. Don’t call me a wildflower. Don’t tell me I’m thriving. These things are made impossible by others. ![]() Bio: Eve Kenneally is a New York-based freelance writer and recent alumna of the MFA program at the University of Montana. Her chapbook "Something Else Entirely" was released in January 2017 by Dancing Girl Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Salt Hill, Whiskey Island, Yemassee, Bop Dead City, decomP, Stirring, and elsewhere. Comments are closed.
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