(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.