Winter Poetry Issue: Ariana Reines

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i was crouching over my phone

waiting for it to tell me what to do

i was listening

to the food

move

thru my guts

i was looking at my legs

in a store

i had some shoes on i won’t think about

buying

it’s the little things

+

are my black cells asking what is ariana

why do her breasts swell in this town

where a gray haze sprouts over the lips

of the water trailing a chemical film all over

her stepping dripping from the shower

is anybody asking after the green

ivy hiding everything behind the alley

yesterday i stumbled

over a bear hoof

this time it’s Joan Baez

the corners of her mouth

do you even remember

i’ve been to bed with the wrong man

a sorrow is slackening around him

i don’t believe in the possibility of the wrong

man for i am the woman, the wrong one

watching the mute mattifying gentleness of those spruces

he is waiting for the morning

he awaits the morning feeds

extrusions

my fits

sick of turning my senses away

something necrotic behind the skin of the lower thighs

blacking out the world

+

Nostalgia

Portugal

Cup with

J T-shirt

Football

And I would

Of the neoliberal

Art performance

Game. In a Portuguese

Potato and they will

And spherical

Like the earth

A certain slender Iberian

“sick muse”

Or another

Forfeiture.

Decline

+

I forsook my dreams but they came back

For me like a scum I could never despise

Enough, missed appointments, theological

thirst, a feeling of freedom

experienced to spite my presence,

visible magnificence

very fast, floating in my belly

I perceived a burden

Peruvian

A beautiful poet

Avenues

Who did as I pleased, or my dreams

+

When I personally

Closed form. I can

Form that Clouds to uncover the

Man ring

His little finger

thick like a horse’s deep dimple

Screwed me

+

virginating

with my head

extracted yesterday’s

mange

took & gave mange

under the sun

aura thickening

+

I crawled

You do

Inwardly

So

much

But in

To weather

remonstrances

It loved

His glasses

Curls

Dinner & gin

Charging

Derelict yard

white pommel

the same tongue laboring laboring

+

first the beards were there

then the berries were there

ankles and docks

a crust of glass

licking the glass

windows in piles

stacks of white casement

she threw back the sash

a synthetic

plush

it could mark you

it’s not a brown mulch

it is the red

afraid of being pushed

across the border

where agrippa was waiting

he had become disorganized

scrolling boots by opening

ceremony and where was i

i was there

i was there and i

i too had begun to cling

to little pieces of trash

*Ariana Reines is a poet and multimedia artist who travels a lot and lives in Queens.  Her books include* Mercury, Coeur de Lion, The Cow*, and forthcoming,* A Sand Book*.* ​