Splitting
Outside Albuquerque, you pulled over your father’s Bronco
to look for fossils. I wanted to go
to Georgia’s museum, to stand in a room of her
pistils and study how she opened things.
You led me down a ravine, one hand on mine
the other on a chisel in your back pocket,
told me what rocks to gather from sagebrush.
I think you loved me most when I was where you could see me.
January desert, unceasing horizon,
sun relentless, my waterlines turquoise.
You cracked stones the shade of shadows
while I wandered down a trail of juniper trees.
Had I run, you’d have followed with your eyes forever.
In bed once, you began crying about how
all my poems were for women
I knew before you. You begged
to move to my city when I finished school,
work as a dishwasher if it meant we shared an apartment.
You called me over to stare at shards
of dead things in your palms,
to marvel at what time and pressure could do.
I thumbed dust from their tiny calcium bodies
and tried to forget you were a man.
Or, I tried to forget I was a girl.
I was still thinking about Georgia,
how I was alive once too.
Impatient Love Poem
I don’t want to meditate anymore I don’t want
to list my gratitudes I don’t want to budget
or meal prep or vacuum I don’t want a calendar
I don’t want to take my iron supplement
with breakfast I don’t want to stretch before bed
I don’t wanna listen to the interview with the relationship
therapist I don’t wanna read the zine on attachment
theory I don’t want a regular journaling practice
I don’t want to analyze patterns from childhood
I don’t want to wear sunscreen draw a hot bath
I don’t want to ready my body I want to be unprepared
I want to get going already I want to cut to the good part
I want to cut something so sharp so clean
you make a noise I’ve never heard before I want winter
with you I want to know you in the summer
I want to regret with you I want to wrestle you in a field
of orange poppies I want to embarrass myself
in front of you I want to show you something ugly
I want to hold you by a body of water I want you
to explain your father to me I want you to tell me
about Utah I want you to describe my eyes again
the way you did beside the pool table beside the sea
of leather daddies and go-go dancers the night we met
I wanted more of you already but I left the party and you lost
your bag You found it by the wall outside
where we were kissing and I touched myself to sleep
pictured you sifting through the crowd of bodies until you arrived
at the spot where I was honest with my want
VIRGINIA KANE is a writer from Alexandria, Virginia. A graduate of Kenyon College, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in them., The Adroit Journal, Poet Lore, The Baltimore Review, The Columbia Journal, and on the Ours Poetica web series. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina where she works as a bookseller and teaching artist.
WIL A. EMERSON is a writer and artist, and resides in Raleigh, NC. Transplanted from Michigan, mild climates are welcomed as she often paints on the deck of a 35-story high rise. Fictional accounts of patients and professionals are woven into her mysteries. Family and reading fill spare hours.
