Photographs of Last Year Look Like a Crime Scene
[after Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson]
Exhibit A:
when they made love
i. when they made love
ii. when they made love
iii. when they made
Exhibit B:
I am dreaming the dark-hand dream
a man’s naked back staring at a dawn
arched running away
I am dreaming the dawn-dream
a man’s naked staring / me, arched / me,
running away
Exhibit C:
when we make (love)
each the bones / of her back
an arched dream / a both-hands
/ dream cause a shiver / of
rain a root / in the dark the
night / splits open too soon
Exhibit D:
(the base of her spine / the bass
of her throat)
Exhibit E:
a low sound [l/m]oves in me
slowly, opens
Exhibit F:
Jesus I hate it when you cry.
Jesus I hate it when you cry.
Jesus I hate it when you cry.
Jesus I hate it when you cry
when you cry
I hate it
I hate it when you
I hate it you cry
I hate you
I
I
Jesus
I hate when
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
Jesus, I—
Exhibit G:
I LOVED YOU ONCE AND NOW I DON’T ANYMORE
I LOVED YOU ONCE BUT I DON’T KNOW YOU ANYMORE
I LOVED YOU ONCE BUT I DON’T NOW AND I DON’T KNOW YOU ANYMORE
I DON’T KNOW YOU ANYMORE BUT ONCE I LOVED YOU
I LOVED YOU AND NOW I DON’T KNOW ANYMORE
or i am groping at
the bedsheets for your hot
breath lumped like i’m not the only one
i’m alive for i mean
Exhibit H:
Can’t you ever just fuck and not think? Can’t I eat you out of my hands? Don’t you have a napkin? Aren’t you ready for this?
Exhibit I:
I am standing at the window and my back is staring out into
the dark room and I
am running both hands down my neck lover,
cause me, lover
dream me
and in the not-light
I am the beautiful boy I write poems about and I
root shallowly into myself and I run
up the electric bill looking for
love and I make
this poem about me I make
everything about me and I
touch in slow succession each
the bones of my hands and I wait
for the dawn to open her eyes
For Spit
two days ago i stopped messaging first
and since then it’s been
quiet and it’s not like i don’t know
what my body does to mens’ mouths
i just mean cops have barreled
into the bones of my friends and i and
we still can’t admit into existence
that we stay late at every event
just in case the mouth belonging to
the body we imagine barreling
into us like
glass
spattered
a vein
burst
a waking
alert
a phone’s
buzz
break-
ing the
night
back
open
asks us if we’d like to go home
with them
tonight.
L. R. Bird (they/them) is a trans poet cryptid haunting highway rest-stops. They’ve hosted the Texas Grand Slam final stage and multiple National Poetry Slam prelim stages, performed at places like Busboys & Poets and the Bowery Poetry Club, have work forthcoming in the 2017 Bettering American Poetry anthology, and they are the author of Bloodmuck (The Atlas Review, 2018) and Invention of the Mouth (Dream Pop Press, 2019). WEB
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