Emily Kendal Frey

When the artist is terrorized

Eye holes bloodied

How dare you
break out,

red berry,

from the branch?

When Andromeda comes down

Last licking fish

The earth warped
and terrible

Like Demeter’s dead
leaves—

fists, only

Death’s small
fists in a field, knobs

When the artist is buried

and the telephone wires are flying

in the wind
whirled bunches in the tidal waves of nuclear

ash

When the future’s
fingers are long

cold

And kale

And love

And fresh

shoots

Are simply distractions

Gilded terms like

Parthenon

Language with outdated structure

Like

Envy

Or

Physics

When space is combusted
And sold to be combusted
And we have opened our mouths
And our bones inside
Are not solid
Our bones inside
Are inverse
Ocean water
Where blood was

When the artist
Is blood

No hair

No acceptable arena

Proud defiant utterance
of image

Black briefcase, beauty
detonated

After it rains I want to be naked with you in the ocean
It seems impossible that we could ever be
salty or wrinkled enough

I would that I was a Greek island

or at least a pitted
fruit

No not water

Water is gone

Don’t you see?

Why must a woman be chained to a rock?

The monster is love

You cannot keep

another

no matter

I used to walk miles out to the cemetery

I’d climb the hill

The city would be there

Sucking on the sky

like an awful million-eyed baby

How can I keep anything?

I cannot

And I’d walk back

Stand under the pine tree

Across from my apartment

Look at myself for a minute

From a distance

Before going back in

Posted 03/28/12

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