Fliff! Fliff! Ain’t even countin’ it! (2 poims)

Want

Dusk births a weird teeming. Burrows
in the eye. Animals made of dusk

emerge from the night’s hide.
In her nightclothes she creeps out

among them. They are shuffle & breath,
licking their pelts. Leaning, in the dark,

toward presence. They circle & scent.
She is a blot in the field, & she wants

to be with them, to touch them, to know
what they know. She wants to be known,

& they know her. Once, she was a hole,
& death filled her. As ruin fills a felled tree.

Death clings to her. The buried thing
in the backyard. Meat bleeding in

its drawer. She wears it as her own face.
Her eyeteeth. Her fine pattern of bones.

Once, she was an animal, & now
she is want, & stench, & fist.

- Claire Hero

Ever Read a Book Called AWE?

Have you ever read a book called AWE?
I have. I wrote it. That’s my book.
I wrote that book. I wrote that one.
Some people read it, they said,
We will make your book.
I said, Really? I love you.
They said, We love you, too.
I said, Good then
I will love you forever
They said, Great!, and looked scared
Some people I love
Don’t love me
Others love me
That’s good
When you sit in landscape of snow
And you’re a bitd, that’s Awe
When you look over a big green field
And the dead soldiers lie all around you, that’s Love
That’s Love and Awe.
Say it
That’s Love and Awe.
There is nothing better.
Or if there is
Then I don’t care

– Dorothea Lasky

Both poims courtesy of A Public Space issue 6, which was otherwise pretty disappointing.