2 Poems Kristin Hatch


little


remember when we found that spine
lodged behind the sun’s trachea & fenced the clouds for dibs

nature liked us like whimsy nieces,
auntie always playing dead

we were see-through then,
eager for mud
& the misadventures of the angel zoo –

how to grow thighs thick w/tender

we kept knocking on the glass of elephant grief,
anxious for a word that said like ‘cathedral’


alone at night in winter, in a sign language city

i keep taking pictures of arches.



more so, forearm


first, the hand:
a mechanism for want-digit spread,
real-live science machine
bent physics of scapegoat and claw

method feeds then to/feeds into

hypothesis, an elbow:
collateral pythagorus
a and b and c
a function of unfinished architecture

the give between bends, pause a little
linear valley of soft hairs and comma
muscle, a theory of desire and peacock

once in the park, you gave me a pinecone &
i brushed a fly from your forearm

research: tracing paper, a skinpage or maybe

flesh, in the marrow of our trochlear once-ago
i find conclusion slaving please at the structure
this alter, so coyly a creature of experiment

it leaves me still &
gluttoned for its tame