The Moose and All
The table edge is all that keeps my elbow's heat.
Last winter a moose wandered from the mountain in
to eat the neighbor's trees. Walking home: hoofprints. Snow
quiet as an ankle bone. The difference is
freeways and I pay for these warm months,
this tiny kitchen, but look
how brand new I am here saying I was just telling
so and so that, to prove something so
and so I real: listening, talking,
the scaffolded city. At the very least I am no longer afraid
I'll find a moose around the next corner. So here
it is: It was snowing, and then it stopped;
I was throwing my whole body
into it, scraping ice from the windshield, and now—well,
I'm not. I'm saying I didn't see it coming, okay,
none of it. These curbs, this sun, my hair long
and disastrous thrown over my shoulder
in the bar I like on 40th, and once
just laughing and laughing in the kitchen—you
juggled lemons, dropping them all, and then gone, the moose
huge and close in the old impossible night.
Almost Glittering
In a square of light pulled onto the kitchen floor
I peel oranges and tell Kavanaugh to go
fuck himself
it’s nice here Oakland all golden
yarrow pot smoke the toe dent of a flip flop gathering
dew or leftover fog in the street Jesus Christ
Halle’s text says listening in
a rush toward something I’d rather be
not licking citrus picking lettuce off my knee maybe
a brain surgeon a cabinet maker someone’s
one night stand leaving earrings on the shelf instead but
you must go on unraveling into yourself
no matter who
can afford haircuts or healthcare Halle and I
were laughing at billboards yesterday
on our usual way to eat
sweet potato fries gossip and get side-eyed at the bar I mean wholly
hooting for miles our very own bodies our loose selves
what dumb luck then dumb luck now tuning Brett
out knuckles sticky in the sun a little
glittery almost or something
Emily Alexander eats food and lives in Idaho. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Hobart Pulp, On the Seawall, and Penn Review.