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as above (of course) so below
by Emma Eisler

July 19, 2021 Contributed By: Emma Eisler

This poem was nominated for The Best of the Net.

Basement Party
Photo By Cedric Lange

foxtail flower, cunning loveliness, leave

me to eat until i’m full, fill up on bitterness.

before it is our house it is – to me – one

basement, a roving plane of parties where

i drink to stomachache. i don’t know now

if i ever saw you or wish i had. you were

a dancing stranger OR a silhouette upstairs

[it was yours before it was mine.] eerie in

planes of sunlight, the house where house

falls away, where we could be anywhere,

a sloshing, sluggish boat, and what of the

the swell of strangers, your lips on mine,

so my self seems to drop away, so i am

a comma apart, moonbeam girl, i forget

i was myself before i was your image of me.

the flowers in their vivid shades of

death; what is most beautiful here is the

place i again and again let my self

be dissolved.

 

in the After, this room is rotting rainwater, is

concrete and tinted windows, graffitied walls,

speakers that play no more music. in morning’s

ugliness, i pretend clarity. i am looking at you as

as i talk to a friend, i am waiting for the moment  

you call me upstairs, christen these rooms ours.

how can i love what leaves me a bottle bobbing

at sea, why do i lick the last drops of poisoned

memory? in truth, i’m never any good at parties;

i wish i could hear better, that i could stop seeing

myself in the prism of other people’s eyes. there

are so few photographs of us from this below, but

always i seem to look surprised. i didn’t ask why

you chose me. i didn’t ask how you could see me

in all my wobbling insecurity and still want me

over any another. maybe it would have helped to

know. but i am perilous bloom, creature of damp, 

i belong in the murky avenues of rooms after every

reveler goes home. i am down in this below, here

where i need not explain myself or ask.


EMMA EISLER (she/her) is a junior English major at Cornell University with a concentration in poetry. She is Editor in Chief of the university magazine, Kitsch, as well as a columnist for the independent newspaper, The Cornell Sun. She is a recipient of the Cornell University Dorothy Sugarman Undergraduate Prize for poetry and has been published in magazines including The Smart Set, Allegory Ridge, Cathexis Northwest Press, Prometheus Dreaming, Storm of Blue, Blackheart Magazine, SWITCHBACK, and Beyond Words. She was also a semi-finalist in Digging Through the Fat’s 2021 chapbook contest. Emma plans to continue pursuing a career in writing after she graduates.

Filed Under: Featured Content, Poetry Posted On: July 19, 2021

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