<\/p>\n
Sway, Mojave<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Coyotes, rest your paws.<\/p>\n I am your friend,<\/p>\n Plodding down<\/p>\n the desiccated,<\/p>\n labyrinthine\u00a0U.S. Southwest,<\/p>\n Hugging cacti,<\/p>\n Searching for<\/p>\n Nothing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Watch me dance and splay and splatter<\/p>\n Amid the unifying haze<\/p>\n Of a peyote sky and soothsayer and<\/p>\n Hear how Dylans and Baezs and Joplins rumble to the ground<\/p>\n That is cracked by the earth\u2019s desperate inhales.<\/p>\n The sun stretches its bruised wings around its pricking nest.<\/p>\n The black vulture understands me.<\/p>\n We sniff-in the sweet of throbbing entrails,<\/p>\n with its delicate blued and greened roots.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I squawk. I claw.<\/p>\n I dive from the bone-perch of this Joshua Tree.<\/p>\n The searing sky beats my eyes blind.<\/p>\n My tears lick them clean.<\/p>\n My beak is slick and nacreous.<\/p>\n My plumage, an obsidian liquid.<\/p>\n Sipping, gliding. My eyes are on<\/p>\n The burning froth of coyote.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shelling the Earth<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The sea springs dust.<\/p>\n Shadowy breaths from mountain tops are<\/p>\n Halos for the herrings.<\/p>\n And we are halos for the birds.<\/p>\n Our bodies are tree-ringed<\/p>\n And left for shifty fingers to smooth and pry.<\/p>\n Pinched faces look tearlessly at family black-and-whites, where<\/p>\n The\u00a0 colors were distilled in exchange for a saturated life of light.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Once upon a time, untimed and unknown to you or I,<\/p>\n Candied apples rotted in baskets alongside<\/p>\n The warm bodies of children sleeping in the noontime.<\/p>\n Carapaces and care packages washed ashore for the puckered eyes encased in sundried skin<\/p>\n To examine.<\/p>\n And these women planted their gatherings in a garden of graves,<\/p>\n Grains of granite were adorned in sweet meat and flesh.<\/p>\n The ground broke.<\/p>\n The trees bent their branches to brace the sky, like a blind child\u2019s hand grasping for mama.<\/p>\n Scheherazade-length scrolls of stories have been webbed<\/p>\n To explain the rope of tubers that reached into the ocean<\/p>\n And plumbed the belly of the earth<\/p>\n Jerking the world for a hair of a second,<\/p>\n And stilling it for an even thinner hair<\/p>\n So that sea became soil, and soil, sea.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Raised Ribs<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n How does one eat a rib? How does one eat a rib like a lady? I laid out the truth bare as a funnel of arctic wind. And you awoke the next day as if bathed in I\u2019ve been told in rooms of stringent fluorescence another arctic wind, that I\u2019m out of his rib. My back measures my years by fear, marking my essence’s contractions and the unwanted My essence has fought thought. Unwavering in its want of being, for Existence in any possible My hand droops and harnesses an invisible computer\u2019s mouse, endlessly. Physical activity She who will have taught her only daughter how to eat ribs fit for armies. Including the rib \u201cDarling, the only way to eat a rib is with proper hunger for the last vestige of juice. Incarnation.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n About the Poet:<\/em><\/p>\n Stephanie Lamberson resides in Brooklyn reluctantly-she’d rather be gadding about the U.S. Southwest. Urged by her heart’s beating chant of “write it all down,” she scrawls on post-its, writing pads, and cigarette cartons. She primarily writes poems, which arm her in daily wrestles with solipsism. She will enter an MFA in Poetry program next year. Sway, Mojave Coyotes, rest your paws. I am your friend, Plodding down the desiccated, labyrinthine\u00a0U.S. Southwest, Hugging cacti, Searching for Nothing. Watch me dance and splay and splatter Amid the unifying haze Of a peyote sky and soothsayer and Hear how Dylans and Baezs and Joplins rumble to the ground That is cracked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,219,199],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3283,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/3283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThat and other things that mama hadn\u2019t mentioned.
\nWhile the other girls were off to athletic and academic practices, I was being glazed by the glare
\nof the TV screen. But even more so, I watched you and loved you to a degree unrequited,
\nmama.
\nTo eat a rib like a lady, to soak in its southern deliciousness, in the hands of a meek young girl in
\nthis city for all time, not dripping but dried like the bare bones of the truth you smirked at last
\nnight. A truth that I laced in BBQ paste to keep your lips from slanting, proving how much of a
\nmess I really am and how much of one I can make.<\/p>\n
\nLethe. Free.<\/p>\n
\nHow selfish of you\u2014 I want it all, and I want it from you.<\/p>\n
\npromise of one explosion (but out of what?)<\/p>\n
\nWorld.<\/p>\n
\nenervates me. My back, my map, it curves in what would be elegant for a swan but for this
\nhuman form beckons the elderly woman who I hope looks up stooped yet charmingly at me this
\nmoment.<\/p>\n
\ndispensable for him but most fertile for us. Who told her daughter:<\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"