STOPGAP
wake up tomorrow
write something
something god something :
I mean why can’t we swirl in a sphere
some more
how much
have you
thought
about liquid
how much
thought
have you
about
god
in this my hard and harder time knowing
who
is on what
side
walking
in the sun
toward hell
a mascara'd girl
stopped me
to survey
I was thinking psychology sociology I was thinking freshman math
how when they say problems
I hear poems
(x- 5)
she said what do you think of
god
I said
problem
I meant you don't know
who you're talking to
no answer
without o artifice
on this
beautiful
autumn
day
I love too
many people now
cannot tell
god
cannot tell
how
they mean
cannot say
o flower
o stone slab
I'm afraid
I'm afraid
of
everyone
I've ever met who is named Mary
everyone
I've ever met is named
Emily
we don't think what we're doing
to children bringing them
to the world
sweet babies of my ribs
I cannot help you fill
yourselves
with names
how tastes that
thistle stick to your tongue
o holy void
teach me how not to imagine
their deaths
teach me how
to die
teach teach me how
to die
lean back
again farther
this time
let all
become little become
tiny become
nothing
a fog in Boise
turns sometimes
to small snow so as to erase itself
walking down
from Katy's house my mother said
planes
come drop a chemical
into
the valley
it is the chemical that makes the snow it is the chemical that sees me change
me light me warm under new sun
I didn't believe her told Katy
didn't believe either
that was the line
telephone
construction paper
advent
chain
how many more
greens till
Christmas
and the cookies come
that I could watch them make Katy her mother their hands again
their brighting quiet only in ceremony long walks Thanksgiving
and the cookies the cookies the cookies
ripped white ripped red ripped green
years of paper
then one day
how a day in August can zero a life
just another August day
the first time
I had a rich inner life
on a hike with my parents
in the mountains
in Idaho
I peed outside
made a news bulletin for the creatures
golden flood
a golden flood
drive home curving my father's front tire over chipmunk snout I watched
out back window
nose to the pavement legs circling
around
and around
he turned the car and killed it
again
better
this time
months later watching him clean a bird
back from hunting
Colorado
pheasant or grouse
dove maybe him cutting
straight line down its center
plucking stomach
like fruit
sliced
crouched before me cupped
fingertip through grain and berry
do you see that he said that [ ] last meal
no violence in him then,
now
blood smeared
beautiful his hands
is there a room for people who have never touched a gun
what happens when I want to
(Carr, erasing : I could buy a gun)
I did not
I took Katy's mother a pie
only
to see its defect
it had not come
from my hands
and not her daughter's either no cookie helper this year
no again ever
thou shalt never
buy
a pie
pie
does not
reattach
life
to
body
next time
try tape
next time
try
anything
could take
guns
from hands
could take
one cold
gun
turn
and
again
better
this time
recoil vibrating
from
clavicle
to rib
anything
but being
o god
a name
CL Young is the author of a chapbook called What Is Revealed When I Reveal It to You (dancing girl press, 2018), and co-author with Emily Skillings of Rose of No Man's Land, a chaplet from Belladonna* Collaborative. Her poems have appeared in Lana Turner, the PEN Poetry Series, Poetry Northwest, The Volta, and elsewhere, and essays can be found at Entropy and The Scofield. She currently lives in Boise, Idaho, where she works as an arts administrator and writing instructor, and runs a reading & workshop series called Sema. www.clyoung.info/