the next field overjoy hollowed and carried down a shoot, a laugh staggers over a piece of raingutter and then gets caught on the wind—like the racket of october ladybugs roused from the first frost, how when they thrash their bodies mute red against the boards of insulation, walls flaunting their innards freely, the sound arrives a much bigger animal like how that seven windowed room appears larger at noon with the light sifting into its empty mouth emptied of worry, i'm out in the field, the light in still -ness reverberates like a shovel meeting stone while at work to sit rebar in the earth, for at least the semblance of forever part of me is dirt, another part, a finger pointing north toward the closest town once called Lone Tree after the cottonwood as wide as the field that contained it a name so accurate but unappealing; no one wanting to stop where they might notice just in which ways they are lonely the next field overeven the wind is hoarse after nights spent open -mouthed and wailing the coneflowers bent bridge the sun to everything its opposite a few plastic bottles flower the lawn and among the invisible hollers of air shout at my skin —that rust-pocked animal that lives on my outside how many miles is my body from an ocean from the wind's violent offspring turning the water into a knife it's september again scars tilt to the surface here, almost harvest there, people walking their property lines boarding up windows begging motion to strip down to stillness when i say some days i want to breathe air on everyone i pass i mean softly to remind us both we can nicole v basta is a poet, teaching artist, and her chapbook 'V' was chosen by Rigoberto González as the winner of The New School's Annual Contest. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Heavy Feather, Tinderbox, Qu, Bodega, The Shallow Ends, Ninth Letter, Nat. Brut etc. She's lived in Pennsylvania, Ithaca, Brooklyn, and Austin, but she prefers Nebraska. Find her hologram here: nicolevbasta.com. |