National Poetry Month Day 27: Claire Meuschke

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End to Want

I want to watch the year’s biggest, arbitrary moon
rise from the hills though I don’t
know how logistically
it’s always been by chance

I want to be young and on my way
from one friend to another
smiling stupidly into headlights

a wren binds its own beak shut
eager for the spider’s fly
a man will tell you about his ropes
all the knots he knows

morning glories open to a sodium vapor street corner

maybe I was too homely making cornbread
unremarkable in free nonprofit t-shirts
how when I touched myself with you inside me
you pushed my hand aside and said no

I never went inside the noun and noun stores
just watched people replace people
any pedestrian understands this
if the feminine of end was and
if I was always this upfront

citrus branches new and without flowers
scrape against the window at 3am sighing
and and and and and

***

Photographer Claire Meuschke by Judy Meuschke.


Claire Meuschke is the author of Upend (Noemi Press 2020). She is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Farm Assistant at an urban farm in Oakland, CA. More from this author →