Great White
When we met / I was 19 / still a horizon / a net full of fish / you confused
me for / conquerable / a split wish bone / a moon waiting / for fresh
footprints / & maybe that’s / exactly what I wanted / to seem unassuming /
because it’s never / the gun / that’s interrogated / never / the great white /
cross-examined / and you didn’t realize / I’d be your own undoing / if you
let me be
me for / conquerable / a split wish bone / a moon waiting / for fresh
footprints / & maybe that’s / exactly what I wanted / to seem unassuming /
because it’s never / the gun / that’s interrogated / never / the great white /
cross-examined / and you didn’t realize / I’d be your own undoing / if you
let me be
Glass & Plastic
When she points out
the recycling is more
beer bottles than black beans,
my body mumbles something about the weather;
I’m preparing for a party I’ll never host
or cooking with more wine.
I don’t know how to tell you
it’s been hard for me
to be around me.
The shower head never runs hard enough
to leave a ring of me around the drain.
I walk deep into the forest,
wait in the dark,
then give up and leave.
I realize I am waiting
for something to take me,
throwing myself into opportunities
to dissolve,
and nothing sticks.
It’s not comfortable,
falling asleep at the bottom of a bottle,
but it’s the only place
I’m obscured enough.
the recycling is more
beer bottles than black beans,
my body mumbles something about the weather;
I’m preparing for a party I’ll never host
or cooking with more wine.
I don’t know how to tell you
it’s been hard for me
to be around me.
The shower head never runs hard enough
to leave a ring of me around the drain.
I walk deep into the forest,
wait in the dark,
then give up and leave.
I realize I am waiting
for something to take me,
throwing myself into opportunities
to dissolve,
and nothing sticks.
It’s not comfortable,
falling asleep at the bottom of a bottle,
but it’s the only place
I’m obscured enough.
Schuyler Peck is a poet and anxious free-spirit residing with her husband in Portland, Oregon. She was raised in New Jersey and has an uncanny love for 1940's music, gardening, Buddhist literature, and cheese danishes. She is the author of A Field of Blooming Bruises and Cliche Buddhist White Girl. Her work has been featured in JuxtaProse Magazine, Persephone's Daughters Magazine, and Rising Phoenix Review, as well as an upcoming book with Recenter Press in 2019. Find more of her work at schuylerpeck.tumblr.com. She loves you.
