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One Poem  

Rachel Mindell

Fancy Poultry Parts

When you say you got away with it

If we can’t get high anymore, we can at least get
overcome. A whorl, pussy on my fingers,
pond, the prettiest one in the coop. Hold her feathers

back. Ornamental chicken makes us move like
we’ll flee fox anywhere, private. Feel my trueness
in this? How many fingers am I? How drenched

what did you get away with

like spit, oil and ordinary dirt. She’s certain of things in their
places: side table, the grey couch she assembled because
who else. Roll over on it, safety and choice. Sober moves

different, elbows knock ankles. No more liquid falsetto
like those other mistakes. Hard to feel for them in the dark.
The groove inside her, the one where she says right there

and for how long

oh fuck. Chamber and grip, reach to pull. My fence she
can break down easy. First take the esses, then verbs.
Take turns. Unaccustomed doesn’t mean

not possible to feed on, forgo sleeping. It is the cage
for the bone that needs the keeping, the one below her nipples.
Does she want life like her life or does she want to blaze

and is it better now?

it through? We sparklers, one like the other,
a recovered and a reluctant, imminent or ruined
recovery, inches away. Spent and talking

about years: edge from which to see lights in the distance. Which
bars. Which chemical. She won’t go again though, won’t leap it
can’t bear the climb up squawking on her chin, those pretty knees.