Mostly it’s wondering if the deposit has cleared

and will the chicken last another night

while our attenuated dream-selves

perform regularly-scheduled acts of erotic spontaneity

and inhabit the bodies of the one-percent.

The neighbors don’t seem to do much except smoke and occasionally

order pizza at 11 p.m. while up the street,

between the Anabaptists and the aging hardcore bassist/IT guy/dad,

the female bagworm moth dies immediately after the act of mating,

her larvae to burrow into her corpse/cocoon and emerge in spring (the world

in spring: slow-lidded, incredulous, the half-thawed river scabbed

with ice) through which desire, being deciduous, moves

mainly backward, while grief is holographic and moves

forward by twos.  Certain constants remain: water will always

seek its level; the child asks, not unreasonably, How can a fish poop

if it doesn’t have a butt? the storehouse of the body, by turns

gutted and razed, as the rednecky/hot survivalist guy

on the Preppers show shrugs at his stockpile of freeze-dried nutritional paste

like, It’s not tasty, but it’ll keep you alive.

Robyn Art

Robyn Art

Robyn Art’s chapbook, Farmer, Antagonist, was recently chosen as the winner of the 2015 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest, and was published in Spring 2016. Other chapbooks include Vestigial Portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Scenes From the Body, both from dancing girl press, as well as Secret Lives of Blow-Up Dolls (dusiekollectiv) and Landless/Ness, forthcoming from dancing girl press in Winter 2016. Recent work can be found in The Denver Quarterly, The Illanot Review, Juked, Bone Bouquet, La Petite Zine, Tinderbox, The Burnside Review, Leveler, and WordFor/Word.
Robyn Art

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