You are stringing arrows by a lilac bush

Every time I forget a person my body apologizes

Bad night of dreaming

The rows of devils thick as trash

I want a world I can get inside

We cross the street

In our bone marrow is bread

.

.

.

There’s oil in the plankton that lines the ocean

On the fifth morning you rise, the air around you soft as islands

The white dog shits in the grass

You want your dream masts to rise

Oil covers the sloping lawn

The black dog eyes the roses

You want to put the cold egg of her breast in your mouth

Trash gilding the roadside bramble

You walk to the store

The first level of the food chain is contaminated

Giant rocks covered in oil

You sit in your body, quietly making blood

Wild blood

Bird of the world

.

.

.

I cried so hard I cried rice

It fell from my eyes

I’ll love you later people sometimes say

Not now is a dynasty

Time stacks up then rises, steaming not-love

Eat it and love it

We stopped at Runza

Eat this, you said and I took a bite

Hope is cabbage and rice

Death sweeps it away

.

.

.

If I run over your arm will it feel like a pretzel?

I give grief to the same structures on a daily basis

The lilies are reaching out their death

You keep trying to leave

We’re lakeside on the same towel

This is the world one of us says

My grandfather nodding into his decaf

The car keeps going over the fence

The arm bleeds until love fills it

.

.

.

Emily Kendal Frey is the author of The Grief Performance as well as several chapbooks and chapbook collaborations, including Airport (Blue Hour 2009), Frances (Poor Claudia 2010), and The New Planet (Mindmade Books 2010). She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she hosts The New Privacy.