THE ALMOND (Excerpt)

Is it bad when another person sleeps around your back?

Temporarily,
we are,
too peopled to be had.

I stretch out to make myself a big unraveling tourniquet! I stretch out to become the shadow of my shadow careened!









Didn’t time sound sweet when the bee slept on the berry? It made me wonder how I cease halving and being halved.

I press my hands apart and show you how they come back together.









I am born potential for companionship, I know by pulling parallel lines.









Now trap God in surrogates. Now become limp. Now dance with limping motions.

One has to be careful not to break any bones.
I put fingers in one’s mouth to take back my organs.

Not Not ideals.









We hold together.

We leave space.

I am in love in the bath lapping up well water.

We become perverts aging at wrong different moments.









Alive enough and unavoidable        speechless interludes. I think of your eyes.
Partial, just enough overlap to make the inter-natal space.

The third body delivers a cold soundless moment.

I’m crawling like a baby and making up half my name. I’ve never felt less brutal than I do right now.









What I want is for the end to be
the beginning and for the beginning
to be holding and seeing being held
stripped back to beginning, again.

—

from The Almond–published by 1080 Press.

I’m not actually sure where you can buy this chapbook….. I got mine at Fungus Books in Pittsburgh…..

—

By Theadora Walsh 👍