Body of Work
.
the body of writing
body writing
writing with a body
the body is always there
making its headache
and calves known
you are not, poor thing,
a brain in a jar
you are not hooked
into the matrix
(that we know of)
you think you know
what you are thinking
then
a pill changes everything
into fog or
the coffee opens the door
what a gentleman
what a lady
what a nonbinary explosion
of soft skin
and fatigue
I hate this single-ply spiral
the thin unspooling
body writing its scattered
concepts as contents
and you forget
your hunger until
you shake it to the fore
see how it reacts
to hot water
all those meal smells
the conjuring
magic may be
a form of disgust
perhaps it’s all smells
all smears and bleeds
like how you leave dishes
for a couple days
and the hot water
reactivates the scents
Every Last Drop
.
Alice briefly held the world record for filling her mouth with marbles. She was eight and had never set out to break anything. Her mother left them out in a candy dish and all Alice wanted were the heavy gooseberry bubbles. It was inevitable then that she swallowed some cities made of glass. Periwinkle cat’s eyes. Clouds. Buttercream froth. Her mouth seemed the safest place for these collections since no one expected her to open her mouth. But this changed. Her mother/her teacher/her mailman/her pastor/her banker/the grocer/the mechanic/her friend Hillary/her first boyfriend/her last boyfriend all wanted her to say yes. There was no room for yes in her mouth. When her lips parted, out came luna moths with iridescent wings, ripe cherries, sunburnt cheeks, disco balls, weeks worth of scattered seashells, steaming cups of milky morning beverages. All the bubbles refused to pop. Like pearls they wrapped irritation into a shimmering nacre. She wanted to spill them to herself, become a shining jar.
Allison Burris grew up in the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in Oakland, California. She received her MLIS from San Jose State University and her poetry appears or is forthcoming in various journals including After Happy Hour Review, Passionfruit, The Marbled Sigh, and Avalon Literary Review.
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