these days I open the bedroom window and receive my winged white wife / she stands in front of me with nothing on except her determination, carrying the weight of winter / I answer in weekends
how much toxicity does she meet in her day / my apartment stretches out trying to capture the air, but in return, I am burdened with irritated senses / what do my wife’s eyes tell her when she looks inside
I will dream of repeating building blocks, squander hope of touching ice-pink petals
in the middle of another spring I wake to my furred orange husband / I don’t know where he spends his days / at night his cries skirl as if to slick the sky with vengeance and trickery / I answer in constellations
how many resource flights does he entertain / panting as the road falls off / when the code becomes all zeros and ones, I break
we meet at the kitchen table and I ask the wind to share their stories
the mountain is fading / as if I can bear wings or write with claws / each step, each gleaming glance I am locked out / the first man to build a fence knew how to create a divide / I have only factories, consequences and walls
SK Grout (she/they) grew up in Aotearoa/New Zealand, has lived in Germany and now splits her time as best she can between London and Auckland. She is the author of the micro chapbook to be female is to be interrogated (2018, the poetry annals). She holds a post-graduate degree in creative writing from City, University of London and is a Feedback Editor for Tinderbox Poetry. Her work also appears in Ambit, Cordite Poetry Review, trampset, Banshee Lit, Parentheses Journal, Barren Magazine and elsewhere. More information here: https://skgroutpoetry.wixsite.com/poetry
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