I don’t really care about my Art
Who lets please and thank you mean
the loose ends of the body?) brushed
naturally slick, iced (recession
runs green (there is a sick light outside
the body (calls me from the woods
In simple pain, the blanket
caught (old
structural pain) /What is so difficult about a night spent uncritical with blonds (self-
made) their bleached- /out art)
I know why they love October
In the inward drive to dress
down it tunnels through the wrist
touching the passenger-side door
before me. Truly anti-social
With an impossibly long breath, Reed
spoke fondly of your art, said (however
he doesn’t really care about you
or your body.
(fair mystification of life
when he moves to Jersey /and redoes himself as kind
/To lose all means to love
There are no words” (in any language
Nothing but a piece of plywood and the desire to
Focus underfoot, focus without definite attention
one’s frame narrows through the day-
/hold
the mouths of reddened shadows (affection for mint
tea and the flowering age I caught
from C) how to live
on nothing but the fruit and fungus one is given (in the heat outside the co-op
Long ties with Aimee & Alex: some porch, a roof
certain qualities of sky, — anniversary —
a simple point to live by- /that time-
is of the body, and comfort
/teaches to undo
the raw edges of one’s growth
once transgressed) the backdoor trails in one’s lap
the chills one shares with the gaps inside one’s city (the warmth inside thin paper
that we are taught to unfeel (chlorophyllic
cream near-
green grays. a silhouettish blue) the skototropic center of each life-form
feels- /somehow more familiar than its perceptible
glow; take laughter
for instance, as we sift through orphaned seeds
an ashen sunset (fewer clothes-
/sharing meals
one another an arctic blue (our meridians
buried in the line (a distant phone for inner signals
Riley Ratcliff (they/she) is a poet from San Antonio, Texas (Yanaguana). They currently live on unceded Narragansett land in Providence, Rhode Island, where they are an MFA student at Brown University. Recent work can be found in the tiny, Denver Quarterly, b l u s h, APARTMENT Poetry, Afternoon Visitor, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere.