Apartment Poetry Quarterly

13A              13B              13C              13D              13E             13F

 

13C Kirsten Ihns

[PDF]

 

PERISH HYBRID

the orange, pushing the memory of its
           
tree
through the air

beamingly
originary

so, emphatically
i welcome the copy
when it comes, so relieved:
i was looking for a skill, not an origin

                        relatedly, mist up the window when i want you to not
                                                  look out
                                                but it felt very dear in the completeness
                                    dark

                        so i put my relation to myself out into the woods

                        & then went to look for it

            this is a fun game. this is not structured by the limits

            of the social
                        except insofar as they’re
            viewing technology

            i say to myself as i step

            in the orange—

                                        i could only see that it wished to abandon its recognizable qualities
i could only see now it was       : fruit cocktail
                                                       : amongst hedges
                                                       : genred
                                                       : red yellow stone cherry cobbler
                                                       : nothing like itself
                                                       : cause for concern
                                                       : leaf
                                                       : glue-like, the coming into being of the batter
                                                       : elegiac
                                                       : glue
                                                       : elegiac
                                                       : glue
                                                       : elegiac
                                                       : citrusy
                                                       : glue
                                                       : glue







POULTRY CAN TEACH YOU WHAT IT IS

a photograph of ass + limbs
and the Fool, who is numberless

something quite alive had functioned in my brain leaving traces
are you radiant or reflector or are those different
“and love is shining through all things”
leaves falling onto frost surface onto ice lake
yesterday i saw five stems of flowers
and a cat named New Year’s Eve
a fine rain sifting through the world
and not even angels can see very totally:

            i felt like a hag, collecting my tortures
                        someone has to hold up the background
                                    AND IT WILL NOT BE ME
                                                says Delilah
                                    AND EVE WILL NOT BRUISE MY HEAD
                                    NOR HER DESCENDANTS
                            says safflower
                                                           
                                                            …that was never about you
                                                            stop making it about you
                                                            says snake

                        everything wildflowers at an edge
rayonning glawr of the sense organ
            stupefied by a big thing
 attonitus                   vereor

                                    TOO BIG
                                    CANNOT SEE IT

                                     /i can’t think, anymore, of examples

                                    big thing

                                    brain fry                       not move it      

                        not to break it

i could stop thinking then, it was electrical
                                    plastics on the sectional so it is safe
                                    Brett drags my dead body on the hard floor edge
                                    in this video called “Thanksgiving”
                                    now we are cooking
                                    oatmeal, soup, blueberries, sauce, whatever is

                                    excitingly responsive to heat application

                        and i transmitted my mind’s blindest affections to yours via words
                        when i wanted to touch you, i did that instead

            it became very septic
no 1 could doubt it
became very sink
            smell of where water is, flake, flesh, decay
tuft in water drifting
hymn of parts usage
exercises power on the fancy
which is the poem in the middle called Introduction

i so want to be touched by heaven

                                        lay fully bodied underneath the threat

                           praying it love me







YOU FORGET THE END

did you drop trash in the procedure?  (“it”)

            waiting, it seemed a good moment to

   replace “it” then with mint, deep mesh, unending
delicate most when i click my rings

the cheeses lay technologically congealing in the toaster oven
languid in the social heat in there
risible, furious, potentially “expression,” like
                                    i hunt for a thing in the toy bus bin
                                  feed baby plants when i find it
                               love to dissolve what designed it
                          naked, i just breathe atop the cabinets
                        to relax, it was the end of the day
                   & when i became afraid, i got down…

            this is the scenario to which
            the permissions you assign
            be applied, Dear Lector

dear lector

&
            i felt so dear, so invisible
            like
      the most valid relation
to expression
is

            luminous when u drop through my limbs
            thru trees and boats, the atmosphere
cold fire star fire in the throat turned up, u catch it
                       
            tears, spores, clostridium, venenosa
                                   
                                          felt “creaturely” in the “habitation”
                             habituation
                                          in the end it is something immediate
                                          snow falling into the corridor







SOCK

thinking about the windspeed now

            pain diary, birthday, fever whipping up in the wind now

            under Saturn

            the sense that any thing given

            must start, catch, be healthy, fine

            when i am like a milk

                        ah, are you lord of the milk?

                  & i change it—

                        letters, and

            letters, unsurprisingly

               letters

                        meeting in the gogle doc, among trees, fine papers

                        in the New England Hurricane
           
                        clearing

            :pricelessness

                        everywhere, egg whites: beginning

everything starts with the beater
Jamie uses the beater, the setting on high
on sun
to produce you meringue the bear with egg
time, again, and you peak it, whip fluffly loft
egg toughness, avoid it
stick in hot oven, the hot oven off
cooked when it
cake it, red is the
Christmas
the microwave just says: clock
says stop
fake duck: was i made to be shampooed?

(i was not made to be shampooed)

keeping in time for the future
i became a mulberry bush
which i had always wanted to be
or a non slip
bath mat
from the future in that retroactive
vacuum
way:

when i went into the sky then, i was no longer a zebra
or accompanied by any
ambition
just virus and the virus, touching the earth
how it liked it
water blue clean in its channels again
settling toward the earth
pooling in the earth
all things in the earth
becoming
the earth
their opposite—

then i turned off like a lamp
u cannot control it