obsidian chips in a dish on the dresser burnt my finger between the pot & the kettle I retain the right to observe anniversaries of things that no one else cares about pictures of us looking very Y2K kissing a stranger in a living room full of strangers & now I know them all sitting awake at the kitchen table in the dark imagining disappearing to start over there’s someone in my bed again whose feelings seem realer than mine will I ever be the kind of person who doesn’t look at the horizon mid-conversation the mountains bruising blue in the dusk in Colorado the thin green line between ground & sky towards Las Cruces the holes in my memory shrinkwrapped by time & loss it’s about avoidance so this morning please confront me
You might have to write it nicer than real life.
I find myself strolling past my own ghost & I keep my eyes down & walk through her as though she isn’t the most important person in the world. Who is trying to be the most important person in the world? A stranger beside me cruising up Colfax sniffling about Ric Ocasek’s death & talking about my sadness as if it’s a big animal that should stay outside, someone who says the worst pain he’s ever been in was waking up with a sore neck two days ago & saying I love you is like stuffing endless chocolate chip pancakes into a screaming mouth along with freeways & cities & people & front yards full of dahlias & cherry tomatoes & rented roller skates & jacket pocket candies & plastic golden buttons & I feel my mind leave my body & come back again in a bed uptown. I have stopped being angry & now I am tired. It might be more poetic to say an octopus dreams about an ocean with no plastic in it but the reality is she’s dreaming about catching crabs with her magic camouflage. You can’t dream about what you don’t know. You can’t invent a face you’ve never seen. Everything comes in threes including days. A home improvement magazine hits the deck. A labradoodle eats fries out of its owner’s mouth. Nic Cage’s stupid shirt in Raising Arizona. There’s a fire on the mountain & in the dark in the car I can see trees crowning brighter than stars & love is standing behind someone forever & the moon is another place I’ll never go.
Gion Davis is a poet from northern New Mexico where she grew up on a sheep ranch. Her poetry has been featured in The Vassar Review, Blush Literary Journal, Sybil Journal and others. She has received the Best New Poets of 2018 Prize selected by Ocean Vuong as well as being shortlisted for the Peach Magazine Gold Prize selected by Morgan Parker. Her chapbook “Love & Fear & Glamour” was published in 2019. She graduated with her MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in 2019 and currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Gion can be found on Instagram @starkstateofmind.
Basia Kurlender is a graphic designer, illustrator, t-shirt collector, lifelong New Yorker, friend to dogs, successful matchmaker, BFA recipient (Pratt ‘19), voice memo demo fanatic, recovering sign painter, Aquarius, skater, good driver, basement show attendee, jeans re-wearer, pickle maker, notorious one minute songwriter, loyal Craigslist missed connections reader, Simon & Garfunkel superfan, website owner (basiakurlender.com), instagram user (@bshawww), etc.
