AMERICAN CRUSH
The sun is AstroGlide all
over your limbs
a syrup so terrible
sweet the world glistens
like an eye
just tongued and moles
that source from some secret
are trying to tell you
something old. Pleasure equals
rot. Fruit at the height of ripe
will soon turn sour. It’s how
we will die—
a bush of greed. Wanting
to be orange and aromatic
forever. How does one see a poppy’s
static burn and fantasize a minor
death? You imagine being
in the womb
is like saying the letter
M
over and over. A hum. A sort of self
suffocation. An opiate? You think
it appropriate to twin a birth
with a death: the
end, the white bright
exhaustion of cells. And all
of it orgasmic. All of life just
wanting a little lube, to lay with—
21ST CENTURY LAWN
The grass is tight and shiny like a scar
after scab—what the skin remembers
is actually not a whole lot. The Earth,
who can say—mine or yours, a
god is still an alien thing. An owl
flying from dusk registers
higher on the spiritual Richter
scale. If my relationship to
cells is like a stained glass
saint at night, let me moisturize
myself to oblivion. Fall into sleep
slow, an egg dipped
in glass. The run down heater
sounds more like a blizzard
than the thing itself. Funny how
robots are in every corner
of the Earth. I wish they were
more jubilant and wet. I wish
a flood of robots from a dark
factory—metal hand
on clefted chin, an angular
cupping of flesh. How did this start
with grass? The oldest
automation, faithful and green.
Originally from Milwaukee, WI, Nora Hickey now lives in Albuquerque, NM where she teaches at the University of New Mexico. Her poetry and nonfiction has appeared in Guernica, Narrative, the Massachusetts Review, DIAGRAM, and other journals. You can hear her discuss the weird and wild history of Albuquerque on the podcast City on the Edge.
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