Whole Person
I am 0 percent in love
last week I got a fish
I think she will keep me alive
through each Tuesday that comes
quick world
I read your paper
on how to build a better wall
but little girls still die
open hips open shoulders
if I showed you my organs
you would look
Thanksgiving
dogs are eating snow from the air
they are not my dogs but I understand now
why people have pets
have children
to keep at home
to remember the imagination
to care for a thing
less careful than
last night I asked Melissa if when
she meets people she knows
how it would be to fuck them
I didn’t mean fucking but crying
giving a baby a bath
cutting hair cutting toenails
I guess sometimes people seem nice
then all of a sudden they’re in me
hard without asking
this week my friends have been having good sex
they’ve been getting drunk in bars
in New York or San Francisco
they say they are almost
strong enough for phone calls
I love holidays because people leave or I do
I love snow storms because they remove me from myself
I am almost ready to hold the sun
in my hands I promise
I won’t let it fall
It’s the boys who get to do the naming
and the girls are left with everything else
—Lyn Hejinian
on the plane from Seattle to Denver I watch myself drink two vodkas in a row the Rockies watch too cities lit like small forest fires below draft one of Becky’s wedding speech my cells peeled slowly from Washington by Styrofoam dry ice germ tube Sarah got into a car accident now she has a lease on life she said she’s been talking even though sound isn’t ours the Colorado River is wide I will encounter the kind of language I deserve the Colorado River is wide and I would cross it the men next to me talk about real estate pretend I am not crying one of them has on a thick collegiate sweatshirt that touches me every time I stop being small enough his hand trembling around his iPhone reminds me what else Lithium can do to a body but it doesn’t make me want to sleep more Ava is going to stop using death to describe success people on the plane look happy even though we are moving 600 mph away from Christmas I have nothing left but space some plains look like the Colorado River and I would cross them the poem by John Ashbery in the seat pocket New Yorker says you remind me of you I don’t know how else to say that
biography
CL YOUNG was born and lives currently in Colorado. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in GlitterMOB, PEN Poetry Series, Poor Claudia, Powder Keg, The Scofield, and elsewhere. She is the author of a chapbook called Overhead Projector (H_NGM_N Books) and is from Boise, Idaho.