Where There is OverflowIf I'm stuck here with this moonface it is not a best moment. All night I'm collecting water glasses and flooding your aquarium. I've snuck a thousand tiny tubes under your door and still the ocean is wrecked. I have learning to do: wipe my spit off the mirror take my organs in stride grow a gunmetal heart in the bathtub. When I go to the kitchen I can't stand it. I pour my drink down your shirt and say What is the duct to your memory bank? How gigantic am I with my hair dripping? You look at me inflated. I'm dressed impractically. I'm ready to be slapped with this umbrella that won't open. Rough TranslationNothing I shout will make it across the arctic tundra. I am still here in this dust bowl brimming and shaking to some wrong rhythm my ancestors left behind. I could travel thousands of miles to you and stand here broken-jawed no longer bright and bleeding but I am not vigilant. I would rather stake all hope in what is to come than float through the world like some idiot slapped by grief. Amen. Anne Cecelia Holmes is the author of a chapbook, Junk Parade (dancing girl press), and co-author with Lily Ladewig of the e-chapbook I Am A Natural Wonder (Blue Hour Press). Her poems have been published in jubilat, Conduit, Denver Quarterly, Sixth Finch, OmniVerse, and other places. She lives in Western Massachusetts. |