– Julie Choffel –
THERE, THERE
We no longer occupy
our stations, the same color of
all day
like the color of a hole
lit from within
that home has a
“lifestyle” but really it’s life no style
except, maybe, grappled fire
the invisible, not metaphor, just
garden, the eek
in eking out
some / place
may be othered before (after)
we can say we know it
ha (breath of the dragon)
we were dampened, Persephone
HERE
Stylistic exception, what, style; toughness
puberty’s other version
really the dark / ness surrounding
the whole is what makes it glow –
a home –
rooted more as weeds than treelike,
send curl after curl
to that under-
fed world. The visible
is not always
lit from without, less meta than for.
We tough it out and soften as we heighten
already tall days like one
long color
THE INABILITY
of people to come out from their homes and reveal themselves
masquerades by poor diagnosis.
It’s not their love of privacy, or lack of publicity.
Trespassing signs, pretty curfews. It’s wind, no
willows, habit, cartulary, civil-
ized mess hall in the great animal war.
They are not afraid but I am. I am on the outside, reaching for their
doors. Banging on the windows. Shouting from the driveways.
The animal they used to be, with this baby hanging off of me
and my money still in the trees. The kite, the wolf, the clamor, the chi,
the wretch, the experiment, the fool, the talk, the very idea.