death protects us.
After Tomaz Salamun

to become chaste

necrotic

wearing little books in my ears

automatic writing

corrects to rifle

and i see god

in a domestic holding pattern

tending to our snot

i’ve become weirder

with time

it’s like what my mom told me about the dollhouse

another child

called me a freak

because i wanted

the doll to be my surrogate

who would’ve known i’d be infertile ?

i gossiped against the food trucks

at my italian friend’s wedding

i wore a mother’s sweater

and she sat on her husband’s lap

the doll never said hold me

it was an instinct

i cut their hair

and placed their severed heads on the lawn

where’s the commercial break

i asked my friend to come play

and she never showed up

her mother was drinking

under a tree

i called myself Natalie

and cast my pretend fishing rod into the creek

only to catch pretend nothing

as a girl my mother sent her dolls

downstream on pink inflatable barbie furniture

and her sister threw her clothes out on the lawn

time is eternal in its cartwheels

the seagulls circle something we can only guess is food

in the grocery parking lot my father chased them with his car

why do we hate when animals know things before we do

advertising is the business of nostalgia

i learned nothing from teevee

we built a blanket fort and left it up for three months

in it my friend and i played doctor and never again discussed it

i watched my father watch the Bachelor through the legs of the fortpost dining chair

my friend’s father was a real doctor

And mine I watched through my fingers

i think i’m pregnant

keeping the small light on

like i am waiting for my dad to come home

waiting again under the pink striped blanket

in the low country of my adult bedroom

loam

the word was used the most in 1929

perhaps from a song by ruth crawford seeger

or perhaps the very first panicked autocorrect

from the word

loan

do you abstract it

this feeling

of people living and dying

before the syrup of your life

even began

big easy stone

the plants died so i made a little room

for the cats to perch on the window

foot tap

it’s 75 out

i dress like a widow

one cat chases the blue jay with his eyes

In widow flavor

i would postpone my life

if you asked me

move somewhere

that eats Secaucus for breakfast

raise a child

on the griddlecakes of our pasts and present

/ drag city

you are a quiet performer

you barely left a mark

---

grace (ge) gilbert is a genderless poet, essayist, and collage worker based in Brooklyn. they received their MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022. they are the author of 3 chapbooks: the closeted diaries: essays (Porkbelly Press 2022), NOTIFICATIONS IN THE DARK (Antenna Books 2023), and today is an unholy suite (Barrelhouse 2023). they were the MCLA Under 27 Writer-in-Residence Fellow at Mass MoCA. their work can be found in 2023’s Best of the Net Anthology, the Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Passages North, the Offing, the Adroit Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Diode, TYPO, ANMLY, and elsewhere. they currently teach hybrid collage and poetics courses at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and they are a 2023 Visiting Teaching Artist at the Poetry Foundation. they are passionate about making the hybrid arts accessible to all. find more at gracegegilbert.com.