Emily Skillings

Complete Set of Depression Glass

I’m afraid of hurting everybody no anybody

in the house I drink only fluid that pools in the minor concavities

the blue light is mine
the tin cup, a drop,
a string horse

a fruiting tree produces my replica

I learned nothing the hard way except nothing

I learned it hardest leaning against the fence,

while my underwear hung to dry on that fence,

glands in the road,
weight on one leg,
ventilated, still and unchanged

any wife can see that I’m afraid of doing

instead I let things happen in a loose smock

moving on thought and want

tendrils of saliva fill the pod of the mouth
the complaining terrain pounds the eye
conversations over bread replace the bread

I get so relaxed it kills my whole family

I might wear my flower suit into town—perfume

the insides of my eyelids. what’s easy isn’t always visual

the green and dirt will soon tear out the snow

my friend picks me up in her new car. we drive

towards a still place inside the calendar year

she leans across the console to say, “you should really stop tinkering
over the same old river,

the same one you’ll call gray and the next day call gunmetal
the same one you’ll drink from
the same one you’ll cross

the same one you’ll drown in

while you think you’re being carried.”
 

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