Holly Amos

 

 

 

 

 

What's dark is not always lightless

 

what's dead not always at our feet.
Forever I hoisted those unmoving
                       to my face almost

like something to kiss.
Daniel says we should make
           the words as brutal as the broken

trees falling to earth
but my ears won't stop going numb.
My arms keyless.

Every story is about a piece of star laid down
on this planet in fur or feather. Every bit of it later put
           into a mouth. For each one in particular

there are millions I can't see. I've never owned
           a telescope or put my eye to the little hole & what
I really want to account for isn't actually

in space. We should all be safe
in the radiant
           blaze of one giant fire, we should

all be contained by that thin net we've worn
a hole in. I am safe. I am

until I ask the unbearable.

 

 

 

Dissolution with raccoons

 

How much they know
by their wet hands.

             Water is important elsewhere,
especially when missing—it is not

unlike light. What we put in the world
can never be fully removed.
This bit of sugar, this fist
of trash.

             I want it to mean something
when my hands are moving
this fast.

 

Holly Amos is the author of the chapbook This Is a Flood (H_NGM_N BKS, 2012). She co-curates The Dollhouse Reading Series, is the editorial assistant for Poetry magazine, and is an assistant editor at the online journal Pinwheel. Her poems have appeared in Ampersand Review; The Bakery; Bateau; Forklift, Ohio; H_NGM_N; ILK; LEVELER; Matter; Phantom; RHINO, and elsewhere.