What Rough Beast | 07 06 20 | Robin Gow

Robin Gow
i never meant to leave orbit like this

with my rocket stages drifting
like pool floaties around the surface.
everything smells like chlorine
this morning so i don’t drink any water.
if you repeat to yourself too many times
“this is okay this is okay” it will start to
get worse. or maybe i am just saying it wrong.
i don’t think i should pray
god already knows what i want &
what i want is to find a twenty-dollar bill
in the grass this morning. i know i won’t find it
& i know he’s keeping it for himself
to buy a case of beer at the end of the week.
i left my favorite salt
in the cabinet down below. is there salt
in space? we will see. i am tasting
everything rock i can find in the hopes that
one will come up sharp & brine-y.
earth is in a fish bowl of its own fear.
looking down i see everyone’s faces
all warped in the glass. “i will get
what i want,” is a harsher way to say
“i will be okay.” i don’t believe in either
but my grandmother did believe she would get
what she wanted. she yelled into phones
until the phones turned back into
swans’ necks or deer carcasses. she was
powerful which is also to say she was
privileged & white & took her teeth out
for them to talk on their own.
i will miss hymnals back on earth.
i enjoyed opening them & smelling
old mouths & old songs. the thing about
drifting in space is it’s a lot like
trying to sink to the bottom of a swimming pool.
pressing the air from your lungs.
all the cool kids are eating cheese fries
& daring each other to kiss while
water sits above you like a big brother.
what will i do with myself
she/he is a mess. looking up
potential apartment on gas planets.
praying to tooth brushes. where will she be
in eight years? probably not
on solid ground or maybe i should trust
my own fingers. no, they look like worms.
how do you know you are made of water?
i could be made of well positioned balloons
or scheme of good mice. well, there is no such thing
as good mice. they are all plotting something.
i will miss myself dearly. he was bold
& he was trying to make a name for himself
out of bones in a skunk cabbage field.
where are the snakes right now?
i need to consult one.

—Submitted on 05/13/2020

Robin Gow is the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books, 2020) and Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Their poetry has appeared in Poetry, New Delta Review, Washington Square, The Tiny, About Place Journal, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including The Impossible Beast: Queer Erotic Poems (Damaged Goods Press, 2020), edited by Caseyrenée Lopez and Willie Weaver. They hold an MFA from Adelphi University and live in eastern Pennsylvania.

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