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First, I was twenty-five with no sleep ( )
& my body said feel this And I didn’t
want to ( ) then It turned into a constant & ( )
burned to be felt I couldn’t harden
away from it couldn’t ease ( )
or sleep or not-feel my way away because it was myself &
what my child could see ( ) & what I was watching
Originally published in CURA, Issue 14. Copyright © 2014 by Khadijah Queen. Used with the permission of the author.
My grandmother sat at the head of her oak table
one Labor Day afternoon & in a lull turned to me & said
all the people I knew are dead. When she fixed those two words, I knew,
In winter traffic, fog of midday
shoves toward our machines—snow eclipses
the mountainscapes
I drive toward, keeping time against
the urge to quit moving. I refuse to not
know how not to, wrestling
out loud to music, as hovering me—automatic
engine, watching miles of sky on the fall—loves such
undoing, secretly, adding fuel to
Gear adrift I say—a phrasal anchor in me & here at the summit no one I know knows what it means. I stay neat & ask What did I imagine better before work before that last time breaking One Tuesday I volunteered & never again The drumbeat softens & I still decline to admit how cowardly & shipwrecked I feel so many miles from the equator How fast can I choose differently a presence I pretend In the darkest sweater I own I'm almost cold