seam
an edge shaped
asks be where
the deer who are not afraid to cross
begin to eat, shimmy their heads
strands of hair coming loose
my hunger nymphomatic
I wander the cobbled halls, in wool robes
the crown of my head clean
a reluctant mother
this voice a cypher
of yarn knotted in its bag
the shimmer tells you
more than its casing
in a dream
where your brother dies
the sister you never knew you had
is unreachable
no, your uncle is the dead one
and it’s a forest
the end of fall, and you
spend hours turning over leaves
to find the slug
who is your family
the sister is your aunt
who died from a hole
in her heart
when your mother was a child
the veins are seams opening
I step out of my skin
a metamorphosis in reverse
it’s summer
a body sends a record of feeling
from a distance
you accept it
as a form of defeat
the notes ornaments melting
I pull the petals off
all of them, all at once
they’re tongues
rolled around my fingers
you could be the bulb
it just burns itself to wire
curl back to the deer
your face tucked into a doe’s
sometimes I move the way sex is supposed to feel
all my joints
properly oiled
in heat
post work post
stretch mid st
rut pre prance
air on the other side
of the subway
is just different
that way
my slutty summer
playlist
filtered through
faulty headphones
pausing
at random
like can
you have
a slut
ty summer
if you
re not ac
tu a lly
fuck ing?
well it’s more
an existential
openness
to the possibility
Summer’s
voice cuts out
after ‘I feel’
and I think
there’s the problem
touching my
self every day
for years
like a tree
falling
-
Peach Kander is a queer poet and current MFA candidate in poetry at NYU. Current projects include an (auto)biography set in a dystopian North Pole and a translation of Georges Hugnet's 'Childhoods'. Sometimes they go to karaoke to sing classic pop songs in the style of Bob Dylan. Poems can be found in Peach Mag, dirt child, vol. 1, and Fugue, and other creative property can be found in the Sephora archives.