DANCING TABLE
asking what would grow
out of us like hair
the reflection of gold
on grayblue january
car window smearing
the sunoco getting father away
i saw no faith in afternoons
no chances
coming home to open
cans of unnamed fish
watching lustily at how big her bites
wanting to feel an appetite of my own
encircling each object in its little history
dosing out from where it came
not knowing the name
of the person who
touched it first
septa token, i got high in new mexico mug,
the dollar store vase i wanted so badly
not knowing why
its narrow opening
barely big enough for a pen
swiping desirous on smear
years stashed in a box
every apartment caught
between nighttimes
their lastingness
when i wouldn’t sleep and they didn’t end
when i wanted them
only to end
the cat going into heat
young enough to be called baby
without excess affection
i stroke her for hours
down on the ground
murmuring gesture into her tailbone
her unibrow
thinking only rarely
of the dreck in the sink
or the price of the internet going up every month
i dream of being on the phone
arguing for a lower monthly bill
and my arguing makes it so the bill
for one hundred dollars a month
becomes one hundred dollars a day
i leak awake or not
a bowl to toss off memory
the center of an eyeball
fixing the magnitude of each ghost’s presence
tracing the sound of a horn across the city
EYE
when i was cut
and how
my dungeon master says
your soul doesn’t belong to you
someone else is in charge of it
only the hagfish lacks
a pineal gland
moving my head around
someone else’s innards
wanting to be goo
clinical as i am
stove on for days
warm and bubbling brown meat in red sauce
feeling at once
this clot
of slush
leaving the body
an afterthought
the cleric says
when we protect ourselves
when we defend—
i am just
glistening ok
EMMA BROWN SANDERS is a non-binary poet living in Philadelphia. They co-edit the tiny with Gina Myers. They are the author of multiple chapbooks and a full-length from Gauss PDF called A Fallow Channel (2020). Their work has appeared in bedfellows, Bone Bouquet, boneless skinless, Full Stop, Fungiculture, G U E S T, Prolit, The Rumpus and Tripwire, among others. Their poems have been nominated for Pushcart and Bettering American Poetry prizes.