Poem Beginning with Stage Fright and the Last Drop of Blood
If most burned-out stars claim a retirement home in the heavens.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ If we’re always acting understudy to ourselves, and especially
when Mercury is in retrograde. If all this requires eons to unfold.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Let me explain what a delicate thing a man is: delicate as a crown
of capitulated leaves. (The beast awoke and wove himself a crown
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ of capitulated leaves. It took hours.) That whole winter we broke things,
and pieced together an approximation of love. I played the kind of woman
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ who doesn’t lose her pen the moment she stops scribbling.
I wore a tampon and a pantyliner my whole cycle. The self-portrait,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ of course, reveals as much about artist as subject. These desires
trending, like skin, always in the wrong direction. (But what is callousness
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ if not something to be forgiven? And given up.) If I learn to read tarot.
If what cannot be held cannot be beautiful. So hard to date certain endings.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ November—when I pledged it was over? February—when I labored
my own bag to the trunk of the Uber in a thicket of 5 a.m. darkness?
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ No. April: deep roux of love reduced to a sickly strain
of FaceTime goodbyes. (Blame the virus). I’m trying to sound like myself,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ or at least a woman who sounds like me. (The obvious impulse
being: to throw one’s voice—to throw my voice.) If eons is another
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ word for months. Another word for eons. If hindsight is 200/20.
That first night, faced with the obscenity his sheets had become,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I lied: Shit—I swore that finished yesterday. But the next one,
he’d have written his name in my blood, walked the plank of it
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ while the savage twelfth house swung its wild lasso of promises
across the sky. If October scabs over and he still hasn’t called.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ If November. If December. How splendid I looked in the queen’s
heavy robes. Or was it the knight’s golden armor, buckling
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ my knees? Either way, the shoes didn’t fit, and I mislaid my lines,
my mouth a fury of pomegranate. If I soak my heels in soap and spit,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ raze the curdled skin with promise pumice. Let me explain
what a delicate thing hope is. If I choke it down the drain
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ with my palm. Delicate as a man. If the Fool. If the Fool.
Post-Coitus, She Smokes on the Hood of a Late-Model BMW 3 Series in the Hollywood Hills
⠀⠀⠀⠀an erasure of “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne
Ashley Kunsa’s poetry appears/is forthcoming in Bennington Review, RHINO Poetry, Massachusetts Review, and Poetry Northwest. A Pittsburgh native, she is associate professor of creative writing at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, MT, where she lives with her husband and two children. You can find Ashley online at www.ashleykunsa.com.