NEGATIVE
There was a birth
at this moment.
Feel the wind.
Far from here
doubled plastic
sheer brown bags
floating in private
trajectory. Closer
a stolen bike
in the mud left
to replace another
bike stolen from
the nearby porch.
Wanderlust or covetous or joy.
Generosity or practicality or tomfoolery or nabbed.
Egad! If only one could be the rite itself. The drawn water and fetched towels
instead of all these signal signaling new life, robbery, and the inexplicable.
If only to embody the simple curving of a path. Simple, as it is when it is elsewhere.
Instead I let night come: night
without matches, night through
my crystaline lungs, night around
my empty middle mapped.
All this empty.
All this reliance
on the material.
Substance unsublimated.
Not feels. No miracle.
You want to know about turkey basters I'll tell you.
at this moment.
Feel the wind.
Far from here
doubled plastic
sheer brown bags
floating in private
trajectory. Closer
a stolen bike
in the mud left
to replace another
bike stolen from
the nearby porch.
Wanderlust or covetous or joy.
Generosity or practicality or tomfoolery or nabbed.
Egad! If only one could be the rite itself. The drawn water and fetched towels
instead of all these signal signaling new life, robbery, and the inexplicable.
If only to embody the simple curving of a path. Simple, as it is when it is elsewhere.
Instead I let night come: night
without matches, night through
my crystaline lungs, night around
my empty middle mapped.
All this empty.
All this reliance
on the material.
Substance unsublimated.
Not feels. No miracle.
You want to know about turkey basters I'll tell you.
RACHEL MINDELL is the author of two chapbooks: Like a Teardrop and a Bullet (Dancing Girl Press) and rib and instep: honey (above/ground). Individual poems have appeared (or will) in Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Collapsar, Tammy, Bombay Gin, BOAAT, Forklift, Ohio, The Journal, Sundog Lit, and elsewhere. She works for Submittable.
