Elenia Graf reading ‘Stomach’
STOMACH
i text you about all my meals so you know what’s inside of me when it’s not you. these days i rejoice in cutting up beautiful things other than myself. red onion, courgette, yellow bell pepper, and too many cloves of garlic. when i miss you i send you the mushroom emoji. when i want your attention i post raunchy pics of myself eating raspberries on the internet. fragile fruit. i want to store the way i feel when i’m with you in an empty jam jar. spread it on toast each morning to get me through the doubt. i’d tell you im havin toast for brekky. you wouldn’t need to know the specifics of what i use to appease my hunger. heather jam. i wouldn’t even be mad if the seeds got stuck in my teeth, i’d wave at everyone and say look i’m carrying bliss in my mouth with the toothiest grin. i’m trying to think of a time i’ve been satisfied for longer than fifteen minutes. i’m trying not to make you the sole provider of my satisfaction and succeeding. i cook sun-dried tomato soup. buy a mango just because. when we met i stopped getting high so i could stop lying about getting high. i’m trying to omit less information. i have a list as long as the train track from your house to mine. every bullet point a question boiling down to do you want what’s inside of me when it’s not you
DIS-ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS
think of something heavy, now drop
it to deduce the length of the descent.
we are in the place where it lands,
sweating.
//
imagine the moon without craters.
imagine the sound that rang
everywhere
when it was engrailed.
//
now imagine two hundred
and nineteen
moons, all falling
in the alley behind my house.
//
hear the impact.
one by one cracking concrete. a breath
in my ear,
natural satellite.
//
lift your head. watch them
cascading from this side of the window.
//
fuck me through an avalanche
of moons.
and later, when we go outside
so i can smoke a cigarette,
we’ll put them back
up in the night sky.
tiptoeing
with arms above our heads.
SUMMER CAMP
marisa punches me in the face when i don’t stop singing football songs on the hike
my first and only fist fight a one-strike affair that ends with my blood in the ryegrass
that summer in ’06 she chases boys around tents blurry children in bayern jerseys
all of them still sore we lost the world cup in spite of the hymns and the camaraderie
i don’t care for sports i only sing the songs for an arm around my shoulder like we’re on the same team
marisa goes swimming with the boys chucks her shirt in the sun-scorched field
by the river where the ground is humming and from afar they look the same
cicada legs in sopping trunks identical chests children in high summer
one with a ponytail
us girls talk of course about her curiosity that i am so curious about
that summer in ’06 i learn that one can ask too many questions about another girl
when julia says it’s weird all the things i want to know about what marisa’s like
if she wants to be something and what that something is
each misarranged sentence a placeholder for words i haven’t learned yet
i dyke child stuck in that week in august for another decade
too much river water in my mouth to unstrange strangeness
thinking the blood the blood is what happens