emilie kneifel
alternate timeline
i bike to the metro, the wind from the cars, the sky, the train i just missed pushing and pulling, telling me go. and also stay. saying, i know but you have to do both or you’ll never hurt good. as the sky makes every stillness a going. as three people slink their elbowless arms over chairs in the midst, in the mist of a strip mall, tiny feet propped at the heel. airplane vapour shooting straight through their missing / the day even as it is happening, even as it continues, as their lungs bustle into their going, they’re going, there, the sky a palm, pink and pressing compressing, flexing it out of them.
my mom lets me go, not having finished her story, her thought, her lily pad hands at the water's pecked surface. her white shirt turned gossamer. raw egg in soup. her hair melts black as she clicks to the depths, hangs from the diving board, from all the dripping and going that ended her here, wading for me. me, an auxiliary, going myself, loving her straight through the hydrangea, the fence, the ground i go under, insisting they cluster between us. |
Biography
emilie kneifel is a sick fish, goo fish, they fish, blue fish (artist poet critic and editor at The Puritan and Theta Wave). find 'em at emiliekneifel.com, @emiliekneifel, and in Tiohtiáke, hopping and hoping.
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