Three Poems
17.06.16
Struggle bunny
I know who your higher power is but who’s
your highest power.
The cord is pulled: the scrape either metal on metal so
I’m plugging my ears, moving
my body out of the room or
silk rope rubbing let’s say against
the skin of my shoulder and down my arm
a golden buttery energy field lights me
and the problem is that I keep going after that. Scary, yes, monster, yes, but
4:41 oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Motherfucker, I will not be just anyone
How To
How to enter a nervous system.
How to enter a lovestream. I mean bloodstream.
When the crowd gathers, I slip out. Chorus: I ghost. Group of cells: divide. The last two nights I’ve read things that changed my body temperature.
My all-over chemistry got pushed into freefall. One night:
something someone else wrote. One night:
sentences I wrote nearly one year ago.
The demarcation between one year ago and now. The plunge and urge to run.
Days got longer. All-over chemistry
altered. What if I just *believed*. What if I don’t.
How everything hinges on this.
own it
when you throw love in the garbage
it’s different
than when you throw it under the bus
————
Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir (Future Tense Books, 2014), Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015) and the forthcoming Bruja (CCM, fall 2016). Her work has been profiled or featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Hazlitt, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and Poor Claudia. Wendy lives in Los Angeles.
