Marianna Ariel ColesCurtis: My Reason Is Inverted

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

My reason is inverted

stepping backwards
into the prison

Sleep clot
Monk water

Stunned surface
Foghorn collapse

                                                               This face        to face:
   a boned delinquency

throated fever &            a holy grip

Hold    fire    light          That burned out

rhythm

How could I assign a verb?

A turn on a pillow               A winging of dust

More than that— a large swallow of water

  a whole body itch

Any we must include:

                                                                           the table

                                                                            your uniform

                                                                            my notes on your needs

Our vats are synchronous

Lighted circles hovering

Lit up island mall in the early morning             replete with palm trees

Fiending yellow wants to put its lips in something

Bright patterns of resistance slurry

and leak into the river

A note I secret through wire:

            caretaking is the antithesis of creation

The riverbank sloughs off into the river

The path unglimpses itself

Refusal to be accounted for

Refusal to be found

Refusal to be overlooked

There is evidence for god! says “the road”

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Marianna Ariel ColesCurtis hunts for moments when poetry has surfaced as a force in collective bodies. She can be found in off hours jumping from rock to rock in the Tucson mountains. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Arizona, and her work has appeared in Hunger Mountain and Wend.