Whole Again
And violence becomes an addiction
when you do not love it enough
when you do not lean into it
you have to eat enough of it
like a star
like a gourd
like a vision
lit by echo
you must get used to how it spins
in your mouth
like a hunting rock
like something
that breeds flowers
gecko son
perused topaz diagon
blankness
yeah
it wreaks so much havoc on the body
and the soul,
it designs so much mythology
on your shoulders
tears into the bone life
loots its good structure
leaving everything so
dead
beetled jewelry bugs
brittle branch love
and poetry comes easy to me now
to the whole of my
self
borne out the skin
almost
breathed
out
so
easy
blushing
seeping
out the papery clouds
and beauty is in
so so so much to me
mostly in nature
in the bodies it has melded
three stones
grifting together
crafting organs
out of fertile
entranced
dough
and always, always in sound
the half-weeping
smoke of it
billowed
and
protected by pixies
slinking into
love odes
collapsing onto me like a
bleeding pen
shifting me slowly
out my mind
so I become a type of insane
that roots me
lizard
it stirs inside,
something patterned
something seamless
as if I’m something more
than I thought I was
and today it is here:
in
this breath
this breath
this breath
.
and what I want most now is:
to become
whole again,
whole again,
whole again,
Stella Gleitsman (she/he/they) is a poet from the Lower East Side of New York. They make zines and artist books.