Abi Pollokoff

& tonight this is what it’s like

for the heart to be so hardy
so full the body brims over
itself & slips foolhardy out
the skinsheen : ghosts billow
out the husks of stomachs
into a duel with the air their
own individual weathers

& in the day that’s smaller
than the things we’re
carrying this is what it’s like
to be full of lilies full of these
living tongues that bring forth
ghost after ghost : a spectrum
of slipshod thistles & drums a
little different under the
surface

so : to unearth the rendering
of these verbal spaces the
fusses at hand a little need to
think about what the
wristwrapped questions lend
themselves to : a discussion at
the lectern at the knee a
question at most a little
tender a little lost in its
unraveling

& this is what it’s like to be
alive when everyone’s
talking about the night & its
heights & you know what it’s
like to stalk starlings & bully
hunger into its hurting & to
wake up with the tide & its
aches

this is also what it’s like to be
the visible space of what’s
hiding of what you’ve
destroyed & now lilied you
carry each day even on the
day when you’re busy
counting hues careening off
the cheek & heeding its
flushings to know
this is not this
day anymore

& this is what it’s like to have
a pull heckling the left knee
& on nights when the heart
gets full like this is this what
it’s like

to be ribboned into honest
flickerings to be full of these
lilies full of these small things
years & dates & you &
tonight i’m so happy : wrists
tumbled all together knees
ripping the cage of them the
falter the release & what’s left
but a small step outside

the skin all breezehumbled
with ghosts & kin & this is
what the night feels when the
stars haven’t come out yet
but what’s left of the thinning
daysun still warm on the
forearm & this is what it’s
like to know the stars are just
up there waiting to yawn
with tide     &    aching to
wake up

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Abi Pollokoff is a Seattle-based writer and book artist with work forthcoming or found in The Seventh Wave, EcoTheo, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest and Black Warrior Review, among others. She is a 2021 Jack Straw Writers Fellow, and she has also held fellowships or residencies from the Hugo House, the Seattle Review of Books and The Alice. Currently, Abi is the events manager for Open Books: A Poem Emporium and the managing editor for Poetry Northwest Editions, along with many other hats. She received her MFA from the University of Washington. Find her at abipollokoff.com.