Selves I'll Never be in Athol
We drop our lives. The pieces burst forth into a
thousand blackbirds. My diaphragm is glass.
When I exhale, the anchors dropped in me free the boat. The boat has a dorsal fin and learns how
to sink and inhale at the same time. I am a mess of eyeliner when making love in Lancaster.
Selves I’ll never be in Athol, I birth a pack of wolves. No one knows the scabs I’ve rolled in. By
three drinks I won’t say no to setting fires with my breasts. Each, a bomb to dismantle or
detonate. Amy called it “engine‟ but engines sputter. What I remember of hearts is snakeskin
shedding into silk and shadow into milk. I think of blown pistons and an oil leak. I think of auto
mechanics in the sky, soldering sunset back from rain. Burst flesh draws every shark on a bar
stool. Where are you going and who have you been? A mattress without coverings and an
ashtray full of fingers. I’ve lost a way to point to want. Instead, I hope to cut a room with
shoulders like a beg. The signal says, “pray.‟ By pray, I mean step through the door of skin to
grace the fire. There is a place for us. A, your skin cells parade my softest corners, curling to the
echo of a neckline. Your blue eyes set my veins to blue. You are my left atrium, writing “I want
to know you forever” on its walls with invisible ink. Palm to the forehead like exorcism and she
ties a black string around the sternum fire escape. All my suns rust up against each other. I am in
myself, asking my mother not to die again. She does and does. The orchids in me bend and
blend. Their spines of stem are fortified by storm, now ask about the lilac bloom. Open the lips
and sing me. Listen. I am cluttered with hands.
--LEIGH PHILLIPS
When I exhale, the anchors dropped in me free the boat. The boat has a dorsal fin and learns how
to sink and inhale at the same time. I am a mess of eyeliner when making love in Lancaster.
Selves I’ll never be in Athol, I birth a pack of wolves. No one knows the scabs I’ve rolled in. By
three drinks I won’t say no to setting fires with my breasts. Each, a bomb to dismantle or
detonate. Amy called it “engine‟ but engines sputter. What I remember of hearts is snakeskin
shedding into silk and shadow into milk. I think of blown pistons and an oil leak. I think of auto
mechanics in the sky, soldering sunset back from rain. Burst flesh draws every shark on a bar
stool. Where are you going and who have you been? A mattress without coverings and an
ashtray full of fingers. I’ve lost a way to point to want. Instead, I hope to cut a room with
shoulders like a beg. The signal says, “pray.‟ By pray, I mean step through the door of skin to
grace the fire. There is a place for us. A, your skin cells parade my softest corners, curling to the
echo of a neckline. Your blue eyes set my veins to blue. You are my left atrium, writing “I want
to know you forever” on its walls with invisible ink. Palm to the forehead like exorcism and she
ties a black string around the sternum fire escape. All my suns rust up against each other. I am in
myself, asking my mother not to die again. She does and does. The orchids in me bend and
blend. Their spines of stem are fortified by storm, now ask about the lilac bloom. Open the lips
and sing me. Listen. I am cluttered with hands.
--LEIGH PHILLIPS