---

Emerald City

        I am afraid that Conan O’Brien
        wouldn’t like me even a little

        and I would like him so much
        I would plunge from the roof
        like a sick pigeon
        and tear away all of my life.
        Is that a thing?

        —Or its familiar radiance
        what we actually want
        when we tell our bodies
        to attempt worship?

        This week, my kitten started shredding
        toilet paper rolls. I find them strewn

        at dawn, with the carpet’s
        half-assed elegance
        from that one angle:

        how it feels like same air,
        different wind
        when it’s really the other way

        around. or with sunsets.

        what you want
        doesn’t want you.
        it wants you

        to watch it
        recede further

---

dysplasia

every member of T.Rex dies in a different, bizarre accident

& I remember so well the night I called Evan about my cervix

         drunk   walking         barefoot through the road outside the Meadow Lane house

I did not understand the pathology totally   the meaning of it

tiny, immature pieces of the body killing off the rest

tissue   splayed        not infanticide        instead, doing the opposite

           Though For the most part I see pathos in landscape’s endurance

           its noble, or disgracing suffering

& as the body attacks itself                 when I am scared I act small, even awful

In total there were 2 car crashes, 1 heart attack, an incident choking on a cocktail cherry

we spoke about it lying in bed              & in the morning I left

his bathroom had a boy-shower and a girl mirror when I remember it

though memory is always easy and wonderful           it’s naming that hurts

                                                                                     that takes forever

---

Lucy Tiven is a poet and essayist living in California. Her first full length collection, pilot light, is forthcoming from Plain Wrap. Her work has appeared in Everyday Genius, HTML Giant, Pop Serial, 40 Likely to Die Before 40 (An Introduction to Alt Lit) and Front Porch. She writes for The Fanzine and xoJane.

---