Let’s Give the Gun a Chance to Speak its Mind

I sit in bloodwarm December. Much too warm, waiting
for my lover to leave their partner. Not alone selfishness, I swear.

The clouds this morning scud
the sky in long ribbons torn of purple, 60 degrees jesus h christ,

wine & cream. Old & raw flesh leaving
the bone of sky for where I don’t know.

Happier a place, here’s hoping. I am not
a bad person, I swear,

we have gone about
this whole thing above board & that, among

other things, is to say, we love each other very much.
I don’t know what patient means. The days keep

happening while I go on letting them so perhaps
I am a patient woman; also I do know where to go to get a gun.

Check this out, in my hand, weight of life measured
in the glow, as if steel can carry the sun abaft

long as everything is set to seek pain & something in that is right.
Let me not lie I am terrible in love.

Hunted & thin as hope against it.
Patience I am unsure of though I know its face

is measured in millimeter & love ends sometimes or
never & I try so hard to remember what it means to be torn

apart, what means stitched back together.
That there’s no meaning at all

to any of this big-stupid-sky-beautiful-
world is all that I ask that; everything keep

going on
being a joke.

Reflections on Algedonia

In Kansas, the night gloves blue, first from back.
Through the storm’s sad, softened hand. I nearly knew you here.

So many problems with all these knowings. Of others & hearts. Spruce & Fir
begin to be again. I lived in a place where their sight

was a forgotten mitten of homesick, having left elsewhere, from where they knew
every bit of air against their tongues. There were that many of them.

On the coast where all was deciduous, air wimpled blue
through heat & wet. Everything strangled & uncarnal.

Went for you. Where life was old stone and bus stop benches
proud as Sunday. Where life meant cobbled thoroughfare

& long nights alone. One of those knowing problems. You can see
when a lover can hurt you, wants too.

Like flame, like animal. Trying to be good. We knew each other too good, loved just
wrong. Violence wet in the mouth, seeing it was enough.

The sun levers its way up the sky from behind. Mouths want & pain is. Going home without you. & here is what I have.

Old Gifts/Late-Winter

You gave me this coldweather smile, ten // thousand feet above the sea, pineflake thick
tufts // of snow nested in my hair & this sentimental mood // & you gave me
saxamaphone but Coltrane // gave me Coltrane & you // gave me this lampstreet dog of
a heart infinitely // padding along city corners & every little // way there is to dance I’ve
kicked so many // in the shins with my lakelegging footwork to the thickdrip
bass in sweat filled basements // & we took our fallow years; hands heavy with coins
followed by the electricity’s buzz as it hangs // in the air of a June you gave me, thickest
heat // I’ve ever seen I’m not one for detachment so lets // count all our friends among
the best of us // feed them warm rice & get kicked // in the teeth, compare the bent of a
smile as cattails // & reeds bow beneath the weight, we needed
this snow, falling as thick as it does now // & there’s that cornworm // beneath the dirt in
a jar on the counter makes // such a ruckus as it waxes into something // that must be
let go, can’t be held so I’ll keep on // walking, let’s find a jukebox, give it all // the future
we once had.

Rifke Vatsaas has, for the last 3 weeks, been possessed by a desperate thirst for passion fruit. She holds an MFA from Hollins University, teaches English at a Community College, hates the suburbs and loves the Pittsburgh Penguins.