You Must Be Trying to Say
thick with….vocabulary
“radishes for nourishment”
you must open up to the whole diet
someone called me up, a distant person
Ceaser
continual dreams about death and choice
in one i have swallowed a poison and
i crawl to the kitchen so
my mother can
watch. in the other, roots
grow from my hands: if i choose to lie down
i become a rose bush
this is at a loud club of some kind, full of blue light
i can’t decide. when i wake up
the morning
light looks blue and strange
in the morning he chews
a sense of evanescent
slamming
what does that mean
the dog barks
irregularly
like some nearly Locatable
pain
i want to start again
I sense I have missed a turn
No, complete the pot. See
It, at least, through
There is no other answer and
you can learn
The clay appears to stream off
In a way I can’t yet control
The pot will be very small
Medical Surrender
Importantly they should look like a rock
Retreated cloud your face is
Some beyond’s delicately penetrative action
Detail respectively
Crystal hatch,
sex of finitude
Fresh wind in the face of my head
Since She likes cold Weather
“You only wish for well”
Some smooth Sunday evening
Something that Gleams;
That it could be used
Something taken away
not even
New Year
after James Schuyler
-i-
sometimes you hold your breath to turn the world off
sometimes to swim
such crossroads persist
this is the place where she likes to get meat
hold it still
tree swing its fruit through fog who is all moving in stillness
they think time can do better, rise, afford, do, droop, and collapse
pin oaks keep leaves in December, in green sounds and mosses
mosses and green sounds, rising and setting
sandstone, pea gravel, brick wall, mortar
neighbor window, neighbor tree
cup, cups, and losses
his grandmother struggles to breathe
in a brown room in Illinois
brown leaves rattle out the burned-down year
an old blonde girl cuts new year hair
and gives socks
Cherry the cheer policeman’s wife, efficient
twinkly as lights on American trees, ringing in winter winter
neighbor walks the red tool to her shed
constantly blood enters my neck + then leaves it
even such as appeared to be my nature were gifts
says Elizabeth, that they could be taken
-ii-
Lemon loemo lemtn lem
On lermon lemon omerln lem
Lon liem lemonf ln
utterly lifelike threads! so such! utterly! utterly!
if “snow” and “threads of life/in ropes like roots”
what tree
she
looks out her frozen doe eye, sky eye dipper gusher
-iii-
the year is a marvelous ice
put down in beautiful dress
it tilts toward the Bethlehem star
through blue hedge lights in Florida
some secret splits apart and runs away from me
oh no who knows what the day will day
it will start the weekend
& edge unreliably toward control
time is out of its head, makes keen & sourceless noises
Jupiter wheeling and wheeling, red dot marvelous ruinous
these people were lemon experiencers
they were living
a good sour makes one motionless with
pleasure
likewise a good cliff
appointed food
a string-eating woman
may think a long string thought and become
mere throat, pecked out, eye-like, or
live in joy
it’s hard to say
Kai Ihns is a poet and filmmaker based in Chicago, where she recently completed a PhD at UChicago, studying a form of attentional prosody she calls “aspect choreography” in contemporary experimental poetry and film. She is the author of two books of poems, sundaey (Propeller Books, 2020), and Of (The Elephants, forthcoming fall 2024), as well as several pamphlets, most recently GREEN SKY (slub press, 2023), and Wednesday (The Creative Writing Department, 2023). She’s worked as an editor at Chicago Review and Fence, and currently helps with poetry and the Daily Poem email at The Paris Review.
