PRAIRIE PSALM

I’m not asking for much. Only everything:

to sprawl in every open field, to never age,

to always be the most fuckable girl

pumping gas at the Shell station.

I don’t want much: only to shelter a hand

between mine, to lie here in the grass

until the last star dies out. These days,

I’m all pencil-scrawled poems, or all bovine,

always back in the pasture on my hands

& knees. These days, I write & write

until I don’t disappear, or look up

at lilac-colored clouds. Sometimes,

the night is so beautiful I can hardly bear it,

moonlight resting in my open palm.

I want to live here, lying in silt,

making wishes on clover: for hip-length hair,

eternal life, a girl pressing her mouth

to my inner thighs until bruises bloom

like violets. To name this cicadasong

a psalm, this poem a kind of prayer.

||

IN WHICH I FANTASIZE AGAIN ABOUT BECOMING A FIELD, OR ANOTHER POEM ON MY FEAR OF COMMITMENT

Field,

please teach me to be

open:

let me welcome birdcall,

cricketsong,

insects sunning

on blades

of grass. Let me

keep close what’s good:

watered roots

& windswept seeds;

bloom like wild lupine

& yarrow. Let me

call this chest

thrum broken

winged sparrow, chorus

of bees. Soil

scented hands,

a mouth

shaped bruise blooming

on my neck

like wild violet. Field,

let me learn

to accept what I want

the way you do,

what’s offered

at dawn: your lips

parted open for sun

light, mine

for the spoonful

of honey she offers.

||

ON JOY

Tonight, gathering wild garlic blooms,

I think of your hands spanning my smooth hips,

breath on my neck, how the feel of your lips

turns me feral. Above, the waning moon—

Weeks away from you, I invent a room

for only us two: floor made of marble,

enough natural light for me to marvel

at the freckle on your cheek, the perfume-

sweet scent of you, alyssum and must.

And, here, all longing, here your fallen curl

clung to the collar of my folded tee.

Tonight, I think of your hand on my knee,

and want you wet, thrusting, limbs unfurled,

want the soft sand and pearl of you, this trust.