Member Poem

Frank O’Hara said after the first glass of vodka, you can accept
just about anything of life, even your own mysteriousness, but what if

your body can’t accept the Vodka? My grandparents didn’t sail
from Prussia for me to form a worming stomach, but I didn’t design

my innards: slow-roasted swine on the birch pole, glazed skin falling off
as it tenderizes, with time as the perfect marinade. Mysteriousness believes

my intestines glow, twinkling Christmas lights on twine, twinkling
from all the black holes along the way, twigs falling from careful beaks

of birds building a nest nestled between branches of my ribcage,
relentless motion. My own mysteriousness can be summed up: blue grass

in Indiana, crab grass at the feet—the classic one-two jab to the jaws
of every goose-necked bottle that’s passed through ancestral hands…

At least I can lie in the soft blues of you, Indiana, since my feet carry
no balance and, sure as hell, we know Vodka never let anyone stand

on theirs without willowing in the wind like long confetti-colored streamers...
vodka-bodies, the only ones who aren’t reaching for spindled clouds,

rolling like gemstones in brown streams. When we were climbing up
Chimney rock, I refused to drink until we reached the peak, then I drank

it all in. The river, such a sparkling small intestine hiding under
cancers of green puffs, exposed aging sediments and calcium snuck

between cracks in the mountain’s heart. We cannot love the stone forever;
the trees won’t allow such exposure, no excavating their bones, or ours.