NINA PURO
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Cocktail Recipe with Ghost Transmission |
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To stop mourning, cut the hair off your forearm & the eyes
from potatoes & plant them. Cut the condolence card’s heart out & eat it. It works! Before the glass flew halfway across the room, I felt her unlatch. By the time it hit the wall, the deer in me lay down. Only the LCD screen moved. Men will always build their big curves, subdivide the forest, mow new pigments. I stack shells on top of rocks. Desire grows elaborate terraces. The cairns fall while I sleep. The Twitter star’s plane lands on time. Rib tips are on sale. A ghost dismantles his glass house. Tired white people wash each other & lie with their feet touching. Earlier, that was a lie. Each night I will for the dream where she says goodbye & floats off, beaming. Something in me hoped to sink, too. It’s jealous. |
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Air isn't full or empty, it's just there
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As that spring unhinged
its jaw, nobody trusted thread anymore. Clouds kept unstitching. I can’t interpret what you say in sleep if you’re not here. I know it’s probably sad & frequently there are dogs or wolves or wolf-dogs. Maybe dusk’s a gift. Little cherry-meat heart. It’s still snowing up here between my shoulder blades. It’s cruel, isn’t it? Red knot in the center of us, frayed. I know to keep my enemies closest. I wrap my arms tighter around myself. Night’s a bottle cap screwed on, off, on again. Thread of metal. Thread of glass. Sugar hardening between. Fallow the chicory. Fallow the hum that slides us awake. We’ve started to suspect the doctor will never come. |
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All the Chicken We Haven't Eaten Yet
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For too long, I thought we’d still get freckles
or self-assurance. Let’s all quit sports bars, galleries, Penn Station, doing favors. Let’s watch snow under streetlamps, argue about the color of the sky. I don’t mean to go acute but there’s these fires and locusts everywhere. Our clothes yellowed while time pedaled both ways & I pursed my lips to get OK. Tell me I clean up almost-nice. Sure, I’ve that habit of losing sleep, proper nouns, hours. I smooth my skirt. I’m not sorry my people didn’t summer anywhere I learned to capsize a sailboat. I’m not sorry for swimming away from her. I pick at my nails. How do we who think speaking’s useless listen better? The entirety of the Tate I couldn’t stop thinking about sandwiches. Looking forward to the bday party but mostly to the snowstorm because: silence. I keep remembering faces I thought I’d drank enough to erase. I pick the label off the bottle. Time’s a construct. Fear’s a construct. I keep forgetting this. I keep waking up right before I hit the ground. For years I was asked constantly to describe my feelings & for the record I’m not angry. Being able to name exactly what shade of awful doesn’t fix it. I’m working with what I have, ok? Tell me where your sutures are. Who you miss. Sure, I’ve never had a paid sick day. But guys guys much of what I have is you. We’ve got so much to cackle over someday, circled around a table. |
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NINA PURO’s current work addresses rupture and queer precarity. It can be found in Guernica, H_ngm_n, and the PEN American Poetry Series, among others. A member of the Belladonna* Collaborative; author of two forthcoming chapbooks (Argos Books and dancing girl press); and recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Syracuse University, Nina cries and works in Brooklyn.
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