Poetry by Kolbe Riney

Amrit Patel CC


​

consume


what if i looked in the water and in my reflection saw a leopard. what if I took from her a shred-skin tongue, pressed a lime directly to it. felt the vesicles break, burst over and over: now sharp, now sour, now bright. somehow I told you I need everything to feel bigger. need the world to crush me, split my chest into pieces, spots, cover me in a pile of wriggling bodies like a dog. Need to stir their pelts into a hood, watch its’ slip form between my fingers, as in spotted. As in gold. As in harvest. Need to stare at the sun. Need the earth to be a swimming pool where I am weightless, pressed in on all sides, skin dappled in turquoise, fluorescence. Need the world to be a concert with a heartbeat. bass line, azalea-pink neon, then tangerine, then lime. Let the light turn skin both wide and alien until I can feel it in my throat. On my nose. On my ears. The sounds of tongue pressure, cleaning the deep inside. Always more, more. even more than that,





sop


When I was younger, I talked about the days ahead as though they were made of snow. Impassable, maybe, or untouched, cold, just fallen. Never was I ready for this dimensional version of myself, full of hot hearts in every corner like earth-warmed lakes, steaming in the dark. Also healing, growing true, holding seances on plover-hatch beaches for the spirits of my childhood self, the ones who knew the wishes inside me before I knew what secrets to keep. No longer am I seeking people who will crush me underfoot just to feel a form. I am not an eggshell. Instead I am trying everything I’d like to feel the shape of, like a drop of water, and surface tension, and the warm, silky body of a seal. I’m kissing somebody who pauses to give me what I want, feeling their hands finding my shape in the water. always sleek and moving, moving, faster than fast.





​holes


Some nights I dream
of boyhood.

In some universes, I think
I had one,
woke with the mountain
of my throat illuminated
in pink light,
all slopes pulled darkly
into shadow. 

In those universes
I am less sacred,
for surely these slashes
on my chest were painted 
there by a god.
 
In many worlds 
I am exactly as I am, 

chosen to open 
from sand 
like a hatchling, 
to spread 
arms wide 
and arch 
back 
to salt:

that which I did not know 
but was born 
struggling 
towards,
born to be 
taken further,
and thus
folded in.




Kolbe Riney is a queer poet and nurse from Tucson, Arizona. Their work is featured or forthcoming in Tinderbox, Arc Poetry Magazine, Passages North, Stoneboat Journal, the Chestnut Review, and others. They were nominated to the Best of the Net and their manuscript, “mythic”, was short listed for the 2021 Sexton Prize. Learn more: kolberiney.wixsite.com/website