Elizabeth Kate Switaj


Millipede Down

                crushed I curl
             try to break
       between my skull
       that covers all
           spores & bags
       my orange streak
    insists must stink
             & poison all
                   of your air
             you stood beside
                      his foot

How To Store

1. Secure (Dry Ambient

paper cards cars motor parts motorbikes lawnmowers shelving packaging materials TVs electrical goods & evils building materials retail items canned goods & mediocres dry foodstuffs fireworks & malfunctions furniture carpets paintings paint DIY & partnered lighting & dusk computers clothing animal feed & starve bottled water mobile phones & static shoes furniture ceramics aggregates gas testing pipes biscuits tea sweets & sours chocolate


2. Temperature Controlled

frozen food chilled food & stressed [sub]cultures pharmaceuticals research products chemicals (non-hazardous cars (emission-testing beer wine fresh food & rotten vegetables fruit processed food poultry rubber cheese ready meals olives venison pheasant sausages salad rape seed oil ice cream cakes wine beer flowers juice concentrates & slacks snake venom resins


3. Dedicated Unique Use

rubbish builder's rubble cement cement mixers & shots clay hazardous chemicals corrosive materials hospital waste corpses +


4. Contact Us


Seven Leave Cult Cave in Russia

seven women draped in red
& blue & white gone brown
in months of mudwater wash beneath ground

                                                     saw their prophet gone
                           to other side—     medicinal barbs
      on his thorn crown leather ties to cross
bars on lysol bed

                                                and so came out
                                             when he was risen
                    would have risen    with the gold-leaf haloed
                                                                                  behold homo
                                                    no` was brought to talk

   came out & left children
   left chimney pipe & snow
each wrapped a single wing to kiss
to right & circle all together

                                                                  seven soared above
                                                              chimney words & smoke
                                                   seven left Russia         threadbare wings


In Space Separating

                I am still between my parents
though one of them has died
                               was killed by doctors obedient to profits
I am still between them
and sister and brother and children I may never

                                                                       I am still between all these
                          as between religions
                                                                         seeking prophets speak in tongues of trees
                            seek to not disturb among
broad leaves, needle lace, peeling bark, branches crack in wind, and trumpet blooms
will play a nectar fanfare
if never I am saved    amid



Elizabeth Kate Switaj (www.elizabethkateswitaj.net) has a full-length book of poetry, How to Drink a Floral Moon, forthcoming from Blue Lion Books. Her chapbook, The Broken Sanctuary: Nature Poems, is currently available from Ypolita Press. When not writing, she teaches English at Shengda College of Zhengzhou University in rural China and edits Crossing Rivers Into Twilight.

 
 
 
previous page     contents     next page