these our sacred storms:

within this eternity, sky sits bluing its quiet madness                               its effigy of starlight
                           & gaseous suffocation                      yes                              as if it had anything
to question in the first place:                  what                who                when              & always
when                             when the wind in its bludgery—                 when the bird nicking
its wing along the ridge—                            when the pretty feet, longtoed & trembling— —                                                           consider the body in its tendrillings                 consider what fractures
when nerves twist off their bonemounts                                   & how            it’s not that the snail
abandoned itself it’s just that its shell is still splaying on the rock where it used to sit                                                                    under the same starfucked sky the rest of us gaze at                              & see
the deepening dendrites here                       the rootclenchings under the terroir
see the expanses of what’s left behind when no one’s looking               the limitation of
limbs                      & their reaching raw & unraveled                   see the  longlegs in its net                                                          the raspberry broken off its branch             & dangling                 & see
nothing at all:            the what                     the what not, what the legs can’t                or
aren’t or                             the pulse that pins the legs together dissipating under
absence                      this collaborative burning just a glint of the body’s frequency
a tremor                                              a tendril                                              a little slip of blue
left to scratch the dry air                                                      to fill it                        with its                                                                     gorgeous seething trespasses

 
Abi Pollokoff

Abi Pollokoff is a writer, editor, and book artist with work found in Radar Poetry, Palette Poetry, EcoTheo, and Denver Quarterly, among others. She was a finalist for the 2022 Consiton Prize and the 2022 Gatewood Prize, and her work has been supported by The Seventh Wave, Jack Straw Cultural Center, and more. Currently, Abi is the managing editor for Poetry Northwest Editions and a production editor for Girl Friday Productions. She received her MFA from the University of Washington. Find her at abipollokoff.com.

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this our muscled temperatures:

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this our impossible savorings: