[what if a portal, rather than birthing new humans, was simply a squeezing holding mediator of inside and outside?]

What would become possible if we lingered at
the threshold of arrival together? What does it
mean to arrive? You palpate the inside from
the outside. Entering me, you become the
beloved stranger of my internal community.
Stay here, stay–impossibly long. What does it
mean for you to take your turn as teacher in
the little red schoolhouse of my body? A hose
with kinks and bends. Who gets wet for Greek
marble? As Greek marble? I emitted ahs and
ohs, my breaths rapid and shallow. I slept over
the covers–four feet over the covers. Do you,
too, reader, answer to the descriptions of the
forest’s queerest flower? Are your follicles
spitting silver? Do your eyes give off a sad
glimmer pointing to a long period of inner
excavation during which living waters
relentlessly hollowed your body of once-solid
stone? Muted in color and faintly scented, you
were of little interest to bees or men.

—

from we take our orders from the alphabet–published by press brake

Buy it somewhere? I’m not sure!

—

Zoe Tuck was born in Texas, became a person in California, and now lives in Western Massachusetts. She is a poet, teacher, and book worker. Zoe is the author of the poetry books Bedroom Vowel and Pussy Studies. She is currently working on a book about the cultivation of reading as a spiritual and liberatory practice.