1 by candice wuehle

Image by Peter Cole Friedman

Air

Dear,

I talk less.  Crowds happen and effort. 

Luck makes the words 

that cause listening.  In the enclosure

I wait for anyone

to say in order

there are only two possibilities

and then I do it carefully.  In the nail care salon

a woman from a state I was once in 

told the television doctor she was held in a cellar for ten years. 

I put on an iPod and listened to Bruce Springsteen

and paid money and left.  It is fine to never experience murder

emotions. To have medium-feelings.  I am a thin woman.

I can slip out of many constructions,

I slipped out of that.  In German I have long been a machine only to now be

dead.  How?

        Each completed digit creamed in bronze, lacquered decay

        and I think to say that when she saw her self styled in a mirror that woman thought her

hair was beautiful.  Fine.  I too seek even now.

Dear,

It means not twisting your head 

to look at your own back.

Dear,

I write to tell you I saw a Ouija run in reverse.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K

I want idiot

words: learned helplessness. In the

clearing I tell the story of your last telephone call. 

You said violence. I was in a Borders, I said

I’m calling your twin. I am 

unavailable to you. I heard the Podcast: Dangerously Unqualified

Dating Disasters which our friend now airs

with whom you stayed that day in the city

just today. My trapezius 

has ached since the yes-yes device.

Dear,

Re-present your ear when slapped and the slapping

is no longer an assaulting.

Dear,

Are you an asterisk

off the Word I used oftener once?  Questions

like the above are why star wishes are

criminal.  We cannot fall through

space.  

I could step into a closet and close the door and after three days and two hours and six minutes step out 
and say that was three days and two hours and six minutes.  No

I couldn't.

I couldn't know how much longer

I've been here.  I could if

space were a through-construct; if when trapped

I did not relapse

and answer double.

Dear,

I try to feel formal

pressure but there isn't enough. I have a wig

which looks like my own hair I never

wear it out. Not anything could make me

send. Not all the 

arms, not any soldier in this zone.

Anything could make me

Dear,

Anything could make me want

to add an end.  Tend my life 

through amendment. 

I have avoided rule and offers and am still prosecuted

by subject desire.  The man who answers

his mail can call it

love.  Never call one crushed 

royalty.  Easy descent

to indicative.

Dear,

Life

is for jobs and so What is the World For?  Days.

Days of effort until the original poem surfaces

through a search engine.

Dear,

To answer your text: it’s off to be 

returned.  I saw a child in a mask with another mask

with another mask with another mask.  So

many straps.  I

didn't think of you, I thought of me.  What

drag — an after-event that won’t occur without the other
— 
no, more like popular radio: I’m survivin’.

Dear,

In the museum there is just one ash-man. 

One is all I need to remember all the space

is not mine.  My body is getting better

at being my own.  I've been breathing.  Anyway

I can and won’t erase your address

despite you 

not not needing to erase mine over there not any time

away, not needing

to say: Dear,

it’s the lungs and it isn’t the air,

it isn't count.  I mean cut off the supply, I’m

CANDICE WUEHLE is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in Iowa City, Iowa, holds a Masters in Literature from the University of Minnesota and is a PhD candidate at the University of Kansas where she is a Chancellor’s Fellow. Some of her poems can be or will be found in The Volta,  Inter|rupture, NOÖ,  Boaat, Fairy Tale Review, BlazeVOX, SOFTBLOW, Similar:Peaks:: and SAND: Berlin’s English Literary Journal. Candice’s chapbook, cursewords, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.