last summer i was dying, purpling like a finger
wrapped in twine. as far as i know i have never died,
but have often been mistaken for the dead. this is
how i remember it. why i am always trying
to crawl back inside. our sweat did not arrive on the
back of the same animal & yet in my dream, wet
as an oil spill, i sweat drops of you. i hold my
hand near your skin & find you are hot enough. though i
have closed myself as fingers, i am anxious to splay
my hair on the next offered thigh; here is some halo
the living made together. procession of contag-
ious breath, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums
naked & trembling before the machinery of
other skeletons; but that wreckage was a wall too
thin to fuck against because you were never holy,
only beautiful enough to be found.

item #6741
title: in a perfect world, all the towns in illinois would be named “blood”
form: cento
index: gabrielle grace hogan
note for the curator:
after neil hilborn, kaveh akbar, Sam Sax, hanif willis-abdurraqib, franny choi, E.E. Cummings, lucia lotempio, mark doty, chrysanthemum tran, allen ginsberg, hieu minh nguyen, & ocean vuong

Gabrielle Grace Hogan is a poet from St. Louis, Missouri, and is currently getting her Bachelor’s from Bradley University. Her work has been published by MISTRESS, the Diverse Arts Project Journal, the Academy of American Poets, and others. WEB
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