Heidi Lynn Staples
Febrose
Who will grow thirst? Whose will will stand breathe cry beside the bade as the ever
takes their other over? He is the best lore I’m feverish glad. There is a red hot ever
between us.
Who of us will thirst heed the world’s dread, Not tethered in the lover’s face? I
love his boy. I’ve known him senses heat as a ladled body. We have a call together.
Is skien oft and all.
The end is night, he sways when he talks, leans in his slip at nigh. In my tearing
rubbled nautical mere, he burns over with a sight (he us quit at sigh) and O out the I
door. Adored. A door bell rang. The boy ran. Low. He feels
“lo!”
I love the boy. He laughs with a
“hawk!” “hawk!” “hawk!”
He seizes in the sky an impressive circling
“haw!”
Outcast
i will lie down in the deliberate grasses and i will lie down on my back and i will lie down with my eyes closed and i will lie down with my boots on and i will lie down for all’s ways for everything my final dress the only color and i will lie down where the land is the sky’s meat where the sky is white and that surly white truth is the digging bizarrie difference anomaly strange thing not to be expected unspeakable inconceivable broken-winged rara avis freak in the land so that one tall weed every delicate branch may grow straight and true all those little fists raised against all that.
Damsel In Undress
How nice it is to be broken!
Because really, it’s no abuse prettifying, one isn’t au pair of sex till
broken
into is one?
I means falls down a peep hole cocked.–
Quiet! Shatter joyfully as the stick and the glass.
The terrible is the body as a locket, the pictures inside a fool and a
bully; as we are; just as
broken. That’s so pock-marked! People are so
pockmarked. For example, she wants her body aimed at its target
market. She wants to be a door able, a man’s true
fool filled meat, his lost and most pirated possession.
Condition
Dear time.
Dear time in dear life, dim lock forged.
Mind’s auger, so blind why dear time.
We’re weary
hounded,
we’re shocked often my final stars icily leer, we’re phantom
that’s world, that’s then summer’s heard awfuldom:
doom.
Doom—side-blinding world.
Mind’s auger and mind’s aught:
slight son gone
for what’s there.
What stump.
Hurts wound and hurts wind
blither him into.
Inside world knocks, we die, and dying remember
a star singing into freedom.
Heidi Lynn Staples was a recipient of the New Issues Poetry Prize for Guess Can Gallop, her debut collection of poems. Her second collection, Dog Girl, has been selected by Carolyn Forché for publication by Ahsahta press. Staples was born in Dade county, Florida and holds degrees from the University of Georgia, where she studied psychology, and Syracuse University, where she studied poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2004, Denver Quarterly, LIT, and 3rd bed. Coeditor of the literary annual Parakeet, she teaches writing at Syracuse University and lives in Syracuse, New York with her husband, two dogs, cat and bird.