Marianna Ariel ColesCurtis

ff

Angie Kang

Marianna Ariel ColesCurtis

Out of the hatch, a hole

Out of the hole, a voice. We discover the double word, patience upended.
We build an armament, a firmament, a garment of bread. The grounding of a
secret which breathes only in connection.

In the prison chapel, baptismal photographs are arranged on a table.

COs flank the baptismal pool. Each cross-armed supplicant holds her nose
before the act. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy
ghost.

My neck becomes elongated again / begins to float.

Can an above ground filament turn root?

We lie down on the outside of an interstices. Garden of dirt. A prone body
cannot help or hurt what’s inside. Blurred forehead of a well-wisher. Awake
and weighted with the body of a lover, every place of pressure is a shock.

Could the sun have faltered?

I mean to say                     to discontent.
                                               I discontent.

In this lobe of the gesture house, pleasure and the prison is a bath cloud.

This row house quiver

Under which structures do we sleep
                                         or try to sleep
                                         or are forced to sleep.

Slow flowers and an undetermined bird. I don’t flex. My mouth is open.
The windows hold their breath.

This land is full of unquiet retirees.

This town’s jail is not just for children. The townspeople say no, fail, and
are on their way. The townspeople say no to lots of things. They gather on
a street corner but there are so many corners of so many streets and the
streets stretch on and on.

Subvert the tryingly. Holding the garment. How radio news paces the house
                petals dissolving.

Marianna Ariel ColesCurtis lives in the desert. Their work has appeared in Yes Poetry, Hunger Mountain, and Wend. They have an MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona.