Two Poems by Abby Koski

We Wait

We see ourselves in the reflections of revolving store doors and wonder what it would be like if someone broke the glass. If someone punched us in the face to wake us up, throw a shopping bag through the window. We touch our reflections without seeing them. We leave pieces of ourselves in the vacuum cleaners that we do not carry with us, pieces of ourselves in what we do on the furniture we leave behind, pieces of ourselves in the crumbs that fall under the stove and the fridge and the counters that we will not bother to clean. Here is just another place to live. If you do not want to be isolated, go outside yourself, else your souls turn to walnuts.

So we wait. We wait to come, wait to move, wait to leave. We wait to have, wait to have not, wait to go where we have not been, wait to go back to where we came from, wait to be, wait to not be, wait for life to happen. When do the people stop moving? My grandmother asks. Never, I say. They are always in transit.

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How to Extricate Your Thoughts

Wait until all are sleeping.
Cover up your cold nakedness.
Listen to the fog
Hanging over city rooftops
Providing light from never
Ceasing window

Write until your pen is an empty vessel
Then use:
Eyeliner, lipstick
Blood from scratched thumbs
Chalk
Saliva
Wet mascara wiped on backs of knuckles

Smear condiments on countertops
Cover white walls with cigarette ash
Scratch on hardwood floors with heels
Write on a fogged up mirror, window.

Do not use a computer.
This is more visceral than that.

More poetry at Used Furniture.