WHO NEEDS AN INTERLOCUTOR
do you feel safe do you feel safe there
do you do you feel safe there is a tree do you
feel larger feel safe do you feel safe
exaggerating are you blowing
up do you need are you safe expanding
contorting blowing up are you beloved
do you do you tether your feelings
to events as instructed does the trunk waiver
as the axe hits and sticks wavers hits and sticks
wedging out and hits and the axe so do you
feel safe do you snow you horned owl do
you feel safe exaggerating the tree won’t
fall night yesterday owl expands branch
sags blowing up contorting do you the tree
fails and then what and then what then
AGAINST DOMINATION
As the veil lifts, I overedit.
What’s to mean, too mean,
stranger? I’m out of ideas.
I bear the beak of a cardinal
temporarily torn winter
silver magnolia. It’s not that
deep. A beak like a squid.
Who wants to compare
my heart to a fist. To mean
too mean. As I haul open
the sunset each night, that lemon
light becomes my eyelashes,
the curls of my cartilage, my
poor espionage, my transformation,
half complete.
DAYLIGHT COMMUTE
cluster of wedelia oxeye expression so abundant almost secret common clockwork. Yes bodies no body the one everyone is bored by nearby. The banks overrun and the reporter only says submerged roots and stay away. My listening face swells and hardens but not like you think. The hubcaps spin backward before stopping. How glamorous. I’d wing the duh body along flip-pant parting every lonely morning pulling into the lot, already full.
—
Thea Brown is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Loner Forensics (Northwestern University Press, 2023). Recent or forthcoming poems can be found in Bennington Review, Kenyon Review, Sixth Finch, the tiny, Action, Spectacle, and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore and teaches creative writing at the George Washington University.