(SORROW) ARROW

You give her back to the universe

You bring her home

There might have been some pretending

A globular eye

Cracked in the nest

God is the future of which we know nothing

Oily feathers

Nothing of lost babies

Horse skulls

The great grooved towers

Animals

Dual purposed to be harnessed

You want to dominate her

She wants to be dominated

Monstrously eternal

You drop spit from a high building

*

Sorrow is the last fruit of youth

Tomorrow is judgment day

Rapturous

Light on my side

Deer on my hip

The lips of death

A hundred tangerines, rotting in a bowl

The hoopskirts of identity

Gold and breaking

You order a necklace

You order a porno

You’re a porno inside a necklace on my neck

Ground out another tooth

We fall asleep

I climb the same path

Bloody teeth rain down

It hurts to be born

Are you there

Are you standing in the shadow of my sorrow

Yet

*

Who are we to stand in the path of God?

You were eating beans late at night after

I was pure

The tight buds

A practicing narcissexual

A watermelon rind to be composted

I met you

The boat was built

Greed-soaked aluminum

Oh I cried and my beast snarled

Fear’s mimesis

I shouldered arrows of sunlight

Strove with my beast at your extravagant darkness

Pale and cold

The back of your neck

We made up a word game

Love bloomed in cabbages

Time shook

Tender and rotting

You were eying my sister

Emily Kendal Frey is the author of THE GRIEF PERFORMANCE (published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2011) as well as several chapbooks and chapbook collaborations. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she hosts The New Privacy series.