AND THEN WE ARE OKAY

Today I cried about the future how you
were barely in it the highway cranes

floating above us how their wings
eat the air like a sob

somewhere are knees folding beneath
the weight of their own body’s grief

somewhere is a lover belting arias
lulling me awake and finally out of bed

can you picture it a glaucous night
staring back at me singing everything

is going to be okay and everything is
how we always left it dry and collecting

soot at its seams can you picture it
your hands rooting from my chest

like a crocus my tears in laminar flow
a full garden wilting beneath our tender soles

claiming each of ourselves as its own

I AM NOT AS HUNGRY AS NATURE, I AM NOT AS HUNGRY AS

I am not as hungry as nature, I am not as hungry as
how a river feeds and feeds another, how a waterfall feeds
itself into oblivion. My body wills itself on atomic crumbs,
items microscopically shattered, digesting just enough
to weigh one step more. I am not as hungry as this

because my body is efficient: to fill the spaces between my teeth,
I spill an ocean of poppy seeds into my calling mouth
so that when I am as hungry as, and my mouth waters,
a whole garden blooms down my throat, roots for months
and sustains. You’ll never know hunger as it knows you,

as a lover knows the shoulders of their lover, as a feedback loop knows
what it likes. It’s no use gorging yourself on bananas or mangoes
or bell peppers—any golden thing will do. Something with seeds.
Fluently continual, restarting without thought. Let supermarkets
become your playgrounds. A place where you can learn how to eat.

When I am as hungry as nature, as hungry as nature
allows, I will soup shipping yards of mung beans
to hide in my jowls, retrieving them when my hunger
desires, which is not as often as I’d like to say it does,
which is not to say I’d rather eat nothing at all

NOT INTO THE SUN BUT AROUND IT

Dear A, Dear K, Dear T, Dear T

The sky is so crowded today.
It is now the temperature
which repels the birds
a long imaginable distance.
Do you wonder also
how many birds the sky
can hold at once?
I am sorry to hear about the difference.
We are due an unstoppable break,
and sleep, and flowers, mostly.
Somewhere these are all waiting for us,
as patient as a happy dog.
Last week, I saw a winter deer and thought
of you.
How astounding, to thrive always
in the environment daily testing.
Though if today is relentless,
remember not
the Great Lake ice
but all the fish beneath
still moving.
Not the leaving
of the birds
but all the fresh, new space
they’ve left for us.

Double Yolk extends gratitude to Poetry Northwest, which first featured “I Am Not as Hungry as Nature, I Am Not as Hungry as”, and wildness, which featured “And Then We Are Okay”.