:

Undoing your belt was the easy part. 

What is this sounds like what children do. 

Come here, open your mouth.

A fog of bees.

A scream of bees.

A fold of bees.

I think I have to love you,

have to naked the night

with our haunting. 

 

::

A bloom of voices.

Blahdee blah blah. 

So nice those fading sounds.

So nice the lonely parts 

in the lake.

 

:: ::

In the lake of bluebirds 

near a tree of dead birds,

 

your skin, your skin 

braces your bones 

 

more than you're used to. 

Your face is never 

 

a part of this looking.

Breathe in the sweet  

 

flowers. This is our only

chance, creature, to fall 

 

the exact distance 

that won't break our legs.

 

But falling this far isn't so bad.

It gives us a chance to listen.

 

The steady hum of our insides. 

 

:: :: :

You look a fool

in that body.

 

You look a fool 

in those clothes

 

your sister was buried in.

Fool with stones 

 

in your mouth

or my mouth. 

 

Stones or

dead kaleidoscopes.

 

Stones in these pockets 

for drowning.

 

:: :: ::

Look at us naked on these hilltops.

We are naked standing hilltops.

We are minus something.

 

All those bones on the floor.

Little ones tying knots with string.

Little ones roasting meat.

 

What creatures we are

steeped in this sweet dying,

some pile of bones,

some shimmering bird under the table. 

________________________________________

Natasha Kessler is a poet living in Omaha, Nebraska. She currently co-curates The Strange Machine Reading Series in addition to co-editing Strange Machine Poetry/Books. Her work has been published in various journals including iO Poetry, SpringGun, Parcel, and is forthcoming in Burntdistrict.