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.