Three poems by Flower Conroy

    


[I had kissed]

 
I had kissed
The earth
 
I had wiped my mouth
With the back of my hand
 
I inhaled
My own rank
 
Essence—sweat damp
Sassafras & sawdust
                                                 
Punk & bluegrass
Poured
 
Myself a glass
Of water
 
Dirt from my lips
Clouded the cylinder
 
I bury
What needs
 
Burying
The yard a catacomb
 
Of ashes & glass
This is not the poem that changes
 
Water into ice
Or ice into slush
 
Slush into flesh
This is not the poem of conversion
 
Though if fed
To fire it can perpetuate fire
 
& its shape will be smoke
In the shape of smoke
 
What does it mean to dream of fishing
Your hair out
 
Of a well
Of climbing a staircase
 
As the bell
Tower around
 
You
Burns
 
Of God the Flower-
Master
 
Rasping
                 Your opening
 
                 The slow unwrapping
                 Of a dangerous gift         
 
& to hear its echo
You’re opening
 
                Slit rived ruptured gashed furrowed caesura gullied cleft interstice hairsbreadth
                Interspaced cleaved I divide
 
I unraveled
An orange
 
Dug thumb dug
Thumb-
 
Nail into flavedo
Dressed the pocked heart-
 
Sized fruit
Offering of rind &
 
Seed
Carpel
 
Caked
Under free edge
 
Collecting
The fibrous moss
 
or
Cloud
 
or
Cocoon-like
 
Albedo
& ate spilling
 
In the fantasy gäd opens &
Punishes me
 
In all the fantasies the gäds
Open &
 
Punish me
& I imagine God imagining me
 
                Being ready
                To punish
 
                Every disobedience
So that I am a body
 
Of distance
&
 
Obeisance
                When
 
               Your obedience
               Is complete
 
The cold seabed island moon
& I can’t keep
 
Killing myself & not expect to die &
Yesterday
 
Belongs to ghosts & ghosts
Are never
 
Not
Hungry
 
&
Once I tried
 
To conjure a ship
Wreck
 
& my conjuring
Conjured
 
A pile of kindling
& I walked out
 
Into that moment
Lightning
 
Lashing
At my back
 
The moon hooked
In its dark yard
 
By its face
Struggling
 
To breathe
This was no dream
 
&
Once I attempted
 
To conjure a clouded
Leopard
 
& my conjuring
Conjured
 
Animal-
Shadow
 
From the corner
A coyote
 
Of ribs
Slinked & I
 
Walked out
Into that moment
 
& the fog blotted
Swallowed the ground
 
Only the gold
Of its irises
 
Searing then they
Too disappeared &
 
This was no
Dream
 
& I strove
To conjure
 
You & my
Conjuring
 
Conjured
You 
 
Mastermind
Muse
 
Conjured
Harelip the question
 
Mark curlicues  
Of your locks as if
 
You were haloed
In ponder
 
The quicksand
Of your eyes               
 
You turned
My face
 
My face
In your hand
 
You
Were
 
Dream no
Longer
 
 
 
 
[If you are sitting]
 
 
If you are sitting
In a lit room
 
& place your palm close
To the wall
 
Then withdraw
It & bring it close again
 
&
Withdraw
 
Your hand again
Its silhouette’s outline
 
Vacillates  
Between sharp
 
& diffused
Honed
 
Becomes softened as light
Diffracts inward
 
Rays
Spread
 
Around your fingers
                My grief no longer
 
                Private
                But was it ever
 
                Mine
                Alone
 
All waves
Behave
 
In this manner this is physics
Not poetry
 
The opposite of wind
Sound curls beyond &
 
Titillates your ear’s tunnel
& water
 
Displaced
Splays around the hourglass
 
Tossed into the sea
Tossed into the sea
 
The phrase
Strike me
 
No
Not strike
 
Strikes
The phrase
 
Tossed into the sea struck
Me
 
Untrue
&
 
Lovely
I thought this was going
 
To be about you
[Dear Girl]
 
But
I’m not
 
So sure
Anymore
 
Not sure
Anymore who
 
This is about
& you
 
Have been so good
To me
 
Listener
Reader
 
You the whitespace & the air
Between the sheet & the eye
 
You have been so good to me
Watching me
 
Watch you
From the side
 
This is not the passage that brings
Back
 
The dead
But it may
 
Bring
The living
 
               Bring you
               Bring me
                   
Closer
                          […]
 
I meant to be rawer
I mean to say this
 
Stripped
Of adornment
 
The words
Dressed
 
As in skinned  
                           […]
 
To say what needs
To be said to the bone clean
 
If it be
Blood
 
Let
Me say
 
Blood
But never is that
 
Never is space
Only
 
Space
That wet
 
Sound
Is bay
 
But may be a mouth
Kissed
 
By backhand
Or fist
 
As when I meant to rip
Weed from foundation
 
& my grip slipped
& I popped myself
 
Knuckles to lip
& if it be heart-
 
Sickness
How can I call it
 
                Dearest reader
                Dearest listener
 
By its name
& not its halo
 
                One must write
                As if
 
               One were
               Already dead
 
Meaning
Without
 
Space has no
Vocabulary no
 
Visible language
My father composed
 
                 The sky is up
                 The grass is green
 
                 Lots of air
                In between
 
As joke
As tease
 
But I find myself too
Often
 
Contemplating that
In between
 
 
 
 
 
 
[The Bluer]                                       
 
 
 
 
The bluer
The star
 
The hotter
The star
 
That a name
Is feared
 
Because it is a real
Power
 
That it take possession of the water
& pervade it
 
That it be feral
This is not the letter
 
You read & re-
Read
 
Written in dead
Language
 
Words will not
Deliver you
 
The moon’s inanimate
Basalt
 
&
Once I almost drowned
 
Myself drifting
Among insomniac fish
 
Toward un-
Consciousness
 
Still dressed
Going going going
 
A word repeated
I
 
Finally
Recognized
 
As my own
I was
 
Beckoned back
I was
 
Hoisted up by shirt
Collar & moist hair
 
Words are proof ghosts exist
A glass broken in the sink
 
Indifferent universe
                What a strange machine
 
                Man is
                You fill him with bread
 
               Wine
               Fish
 
              & radishes
              & out comes sighs
 
              Laughter & dreams
              What about heartsickness
 
Kanzantzakis
How does one rid oneself
 
Of the falling
Upward
 
Unrequited
                 Lovesickness broken heart erotomania existential crisis possessiveness
                 Obsessed limerence romancing the stone needy need
 
It awaits hatching
In your chest
 
Until
I can’t swallow
 
Have you ever felt afar
Like that
 
Searching for
Echoes
 
In the cave
Of your own breath
 
A girl enters the forest
Of suicides
 
& cuts down
The strung up
 
Takes the rope
As her own
 
The life
Of a star is one of slow transformation

 Bio: Flower Conroy is the author of three chapbooks: Facts About Snakes & Hearts, winner of Heavy Feather Press’ Chapbook Contest; The Awful Suicidal Swans; and Escape to Nowhere.  She is the winner of Radar Poetry’s first annual Coniston Prize and the Tennessee Williams Exhibit Poetry Contest, as well as a scholarship recipient of Bread Loaf, Squaw Valley, Napa Valley and the Key West Literary Seminar writers’ conferences.  Her poetry has appeared/is forthcoming in American Literary Review, Gargoyle, Jai Alia and others.

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