karvatovski

[karvatovski]

fall backwards into the state (notes)

trust in it

fall in love with it

things come from within to without

a test...

[karvatovski]

fin

I held a pebble and it held

universes, multiple.

A dragon curled around my wrist all night. She spoke, Ozymandias, in a rasping hiss like the scraping of coal.

I zipped in all the white threads dancing. I zipped in all my magical parts and pieces.

I forgot I kept leaving them behind, at your doorstep, in the dark and cold.

I forgot I kept leaving them behind.

I won't do that anymore.

[karvatovski]

— Louise Glück, from “Poems 1962-2012.”

[karvatovski]

Born of a corpse is born alive still.

I am a spinning coin, infinite and nadir, chaos and not, order and not.

I am an illusion. The purpose of this illusion is to forget the illusion and, much like spectating the magician's card tricks, become lost in the art of the act.

Here is the Three of Clubs.

Watch it split and spit the Two of Hearts.

Born of a corpse is born alive still.

[karvatovski]

here

former lover, an echo in new voice, a ripple, a rubble happy

bubblegum guppy boy, girl, boi, grl, what are we but

soft arms, soft eyes

hold me

a finger through your collar, a nervous tug and laugh

open eyes open mouth, ready

a dance of words, flash of color, a painting that won't meld

allowing hours on my right, a hand brushing the scar on your

hand, knuckle, third finger, a story you can't recall,

reason gone only to resurface sober

the next morning.

One night I put my head to yours and kissed you and it felt right.

One night we danced.

[karvatovski]

hallux

Home, home, hummingbird nest

a flit and flutter

after ages asunder: three years? more?

my hands ache and opened, released

the snakes and spiders and spirals

unwinding, uncoil

a single scrap of foil from the frayed wire a

home, home, word name feeling meaning home

she collapses in my arms, most beautiful

girl, they, he, me

I light a candle, make a wish

spill the soil seedbed into my

very limbs, veins, vines crawling these

limbs, arms, branch

vascularity

adrift, this

driftwood body

stone and sorrow

gone, a light

under my temples

a minefield a teeth gnash like Shelley's Frankenstein who

can recall death like I'd recall death, call death on the phone and chat every day, who can

and call the head home?

I am here, my purple rooftop, shingles writhing like a cobra's den

enter in through the fire escape and

walk to face

one's self

no need, no flames here,

relax in the blue abyss, a mess amiss a mist of

wonder, folly, asunder from what

Once Was, the words no longer needing be spoken, a story

I don't want to say and name again.

I say my own name, and that is enough.

I say my own name, and that is enough.

[karvatovski]

central nervous system

I let my skull forget the roses I'd knotted through

the four lobes of my brain,

a forced lobotomy that allowed me to see past the sick.

I let my skull forget by

pulling the stems, letting the briar and thorn

take with it what little synapses they must, dig up

this garden bed.

It was never for you

is what I'd like to say.

But, it's all still here, a tilled field, rich and ready.

I remove the hulls and seeds like removing the vertebrae

of my own spine.

[karvatovski]

From Kora Schultz's chapbook, strawberry hole, available from Bottlecap Press!

[karvatovski]

what feels good

There is such a thing as

loving too much

when it comes to loving you.

I hold the seashell to my ear; I hear the sea.

I walked the sand and

my feet touched each sand grain

like a million worry stones

in miniature.

I walked each direction and I only kept coming to the sea, the sea,

and the sea could not hold me.

I let myself be drowned a million times over, in miniature.

A gasp and a sputter.

How weak must you be to keep going under?

I love when the water catches my heels, but I learned

to keep the rest of my skin un-bared.

[karvatovski]

putty knives

I watch and I’m

made out of hours on the carpet

rolled from the putty of your flesh, soft, like

how rose petals glide smooth and cool, that dry sort of wet feeling

between thumb and forefinger.

I am held between thumb and forefinger.

Inspected, as a rule--

what’s the difference between a watch and a ruler?

One measures distance,

One measures time.

I measure neither.

I sit and I run my hands over the carpet and stretch and I

slink into the hours I don’t count,

dance over the distances I don’t care to demarcate

a constellation never announced, and

my mind goes quiet for once so I’m sorry that I’m not ever going to be sorry

again for taking the space, the time, this

immeasurable fit of what provides

me to me, mine to mine.

[karvatovski]

g.

I want a body infinite

to run endless

I suppose that takes

more care of these glass limbs than I

have cared to care,

more love than I

have loved to love.

This body, this ugly perfect body, this ugly perfect boy

standing staring doorstep rain, pausing before the knock,

And you watch, third story down,

[karvatovski]

I wish I never cut off my limbs to carve space for the distance between us.

[karvatovski]

mercy

which way to believe

the way you pulled closer after telling me it is only over, over, over

closed and shut

a shattered mug we can’t drink from

[karvatovski]

“We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening. To use our own voice. To see our own light.”

— Hildegard von Bingen, from ‘Selected Writings’ (via letheane)

[karvatovski]

I want to tell you

it didn’t matter how much I loved you.

I tried to love harder, better, less, more. Whole and empty. Plea and plead. Please, for me?

Lover, lover, “my love” my favorite words in my favorite voice.

How do I take the boy out of my body?

I wanted to heal for you. I learned to heal for me.

It’d be better if I drank the bitters and claimed where the signs point but I

can’t.

I grieve.

I wish I never twisted myself up, gave up the bulbs and berries from my fingertips for a spring that would never come. I wish I never cut off my limbs to carve space for the distance between us.

You kept asking for more. More space, more distance. Think of this as my parting gift.

[karvatovski]

I pull you from me like thorns

and my skin weeps with me

[karvatovski]

Q: Why do I want someone who made me miserable for so long?

A: It’s easy.

They mattered.

The way they held me while my body shook like the last leaf clinging to the tree when winter howled through.

The way they held me, fever fits and cold sweat, head spins, while I thought I was dying after my first and only hospital trip in this city.

The way they were the constant, as inconsistent as that constant stood in frame.

Did you try to leave early? Earlier? Did I stop you, then, too? Did you know before I? Did you try because you wanted to, did you believe like I did, did you pull away because you had to or because I wouldn’t let you close? Did my pleas for proximity push you to the brink, off the edge, out into the sea, the arms of your other, does my mention of her still slip into you sickeningly sweet like poison in the wine--

and--