My Own Heart
A horse sleeps under the pine trees—
immortal recoiling of power. Yellow flowers bolster in the soft heat.
A man is screaming, for wanting what is not his to want. All men
scream for such things. The face is hard to consider. The portrait
of who was but never will be again. Someone is opening up their arms
to engulf what cannot be forgiven. Sorrow happens in the daylight too.
Music creates the need for silence. Or, silence creates the need
to hum the words to a song you haven’t heard for weeks. Reconcile?
There’s no need for that. The tension builds. It builds, then disappears.
This is one version of a life, or so it seems. All this, never intended
to be beautiful yet whatever has shape cannot help it. I trace
you into the world. There you are in a curve of a branch, there you are
in the warm shadow of the stone pillar. There is a history we spend
spinning in the ballroom. There is a world that takes us on.
Listen:
In one past we take a roll in the hay
and I tell an old timey joke
while drinking coke out of a glass bottle
which holds a small galaxy
of unmet expectations (and you
still love me for it). In another past
we celebrate by undressing
our favorite points by saying lines
from favorite poems trying
to pile enough sticks atop this river […]
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An Apocalyptic Wanting, Wanting
In one moment the man curls himself into a ball,
a pink ball, like fire like something burning,
as the woman turns from him, all night,
into an eternal night, blazing, these bad lovers do this—an
ambiguous call comes up from the distance—no one
listens, anymore.
We loved each other more than once—skipping
through days blasted through with lipstick and beer.
On the porch? We stood like little sailors waiting
to be taken in by the hard hand of land. Smoking
and drinking and kissing in the cool cool dawn.
There was nowhere to go—for so long we ceased. I became
something you wished to enter but you never could open
the door.
The man curled inward like a serpent spiraled
into itself. The woman turns off-kilter, an incredible question. […]
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S. Yarberry is a trans poet and writer. Their poetry has appeared in AGNI, Tin House, Indiana Review, jubilat, Notre Dame Review, The Boiler, among others. Their other writings can be found in Annulet: A Journal of Poetics, Bomb Magazine, The Adroit Journal, and Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. They currently serve as the Poetry Editor of The Spectacle. S. has their MFA in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis and is now a PhD candidate in Poetry & Poetics at Northwestern University. Their first book, A Boy in the City, is forthcoming from Deep Vellum.