Michelle Detorie


GUNLIGHT

Where I come from, we don't
talk about it. There are
too many to count. Wings
on the glass, shadows
and then spark-lights
glitter glittering as
a cascade of guns tip
sand-to-glass. The myth
of a center pulls us along.


INSTALLATION

The book in plastic: a joke
torn bedsheets ironed stiff, a linen
from the 70s, moldy, mushroom
yellow, strung about in knots
hung down to moan sipping
the exhaled air of women
in nets of plastic above cubes
of plastic hollowed out and studying.
Inside, cuddled plucked flesh
stiff with brush bristles
made for combing synthetically
thin prickles of lucently pink
tongues, teeth. A whole apparatus
pinned and smoldering for
looking : what you might
call "homey" [like home].


TICKERS (AT THE STATION)

Lungs folded
in like wings
bear paws
in the curtains
blue grasses bent
together, betwixt
irons and leavers
where wheels
concuss and voices
finally begin to say what
is actually happening


BOOKS OF TOMORROW (waving goodbye)

the needle threads the space that was
the body before handguns, plastics.
glass-litter in the grass, a home
for ants, crow-gifts, a sublime
hatchet the sun glinting over
the tracks, razor zips away
towards corn, corn-fed autos
and homes. Waxed lumber
builds our wishlist, snug
in water, a place for a bone
to bend without a sound



Michelle Detorie lives in Goleta, California where she edits WOMB, an online journal for poetry by women, and Hex Presse. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in How2, Foursquare, Dusie, Pool, La Petite Zine, Jacket, EAOGH and elsewhere. She's also published three chapbooks: Daphnomancy (Small Chapbook Project), Bellum Letters (Dusie), and A Coincidence of Wants (Dos Press). A fourth chapbook, Ode to Industy, will be published with the Dusie Kollektiv later this year.

 
 
 
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