Poetry by Rachel Busnardo

I’m listening to Bon Iver in an honest effort to be more like you.


I know what you said.
I know the day
is still young
because I already want
to go home
and flex
in the dark.
Overtime
the body blooms
but not in the way you said.
Each year
the deer gaggle
on the lawn
looking for something
dead to taste
under the snowpack.
Their shit sinks
into the weather-ridden yard
and we will never find it
no matter how many shovels
we buy.

That’s what shit does.
I’m not asking you to love me;
I’m asking you to see the cogs
synchronizing below the surface.
All those wheels grinding the shit back
to life.

​


Is Borg Short for Borges?


I cannot be asked to speak
a moment sooner than when the silence
breaks, paralleling
the manner in which
the bough performs
the same story.

What voice, what specter
is this that knows me by name?

Behind the name is that which has no name;

Blue skies weren’t blue
until it was said to be so,

and so,
in our own universe,
there’s a tumbler of voices
polishing the diction.

And if all this is connected
let it be by the supreme firings
of neurons and star light

then star dark
clusters and systems
chattering with the mechanisms
that keep us syncing, dancing—
with every twirl,
a silhouette tunnels beneath  
their tales, swishing pressure to the ear
as we dance
from one self
to another
to another
& another
to each other.

​


Magic Trick


He tried to make a name for himself

twirling out all those answers

you see,

he doesn’t like questions


well, actually

he’d rather imagine the things you ask--


Now you see me,

trying to say body

but my mouth is all ohs


well, actually


who cares what I said,

nobody wrote it down.


Now you see me balancing on a broken heel

the red velvet stuffed with fetid rabbits;


now you see me with my flesh

pressed against the cold glass of a human-shaped box.


He says he can teach me real magic

make a perfect O, he says

​
maleficarum, dovahkiin, event horizon, rutabaga, no    


Now you see me catching a bullet out of mid-air;

the audience roars to their feet & then,


on that stage

I curl up

like a question

exhaled from the barrel of his mouth

remembering my shape just long enough

to disappear.




Bio: Rachel Busnardo lives in Boulder, Colorado with her partner. She grows tomatoes and has strong opinions.