Grace O’Connor’s work appears in Always Crashing Issue 2, now available for preorder via Barnes and Noble, Amazon, or (our local favorite) Chicago’s Seminary Co-op, among other places.

COMA [ , ]

for Briana

When I write a poem about you, I can’t

disrobe the earthy weight of where you are ^{[coma—I mean eyelash , bird leg , interruption , ]}

and how I’m doing nothing for you except writing poems.
I look at the word: coma ^{[I mean breath , or eyelash (again) , oar , ]}

It’s everywhere, littering my sentences,
especially cluttering my images of you—coma^{[orange peel , finger nail , sliver of skin on the knife-edge , ]}

Looks like breath, like stitches, like ^{[the cup’s crack , breath (again) , corner rounding , I mean coming , I mean coming to , ]}

the curve of unused hands.^{[You can cross and uncross your legs now ]}

I mean^{[kome—Greek: hair of the head , the comet’s tail , first hair on fire , I mean the first hair a seed releases into the earth , I mean fetal position , I mean born for , I mean against , a steering wheel , or like a worm pulling like sweat through a pore , ]}

it looks a lot like a worm pulling
like sweat through a pore^{[I mean breaking from the deepest sleep]}

in the earth.

OVERLAP LAPPING FRAMES SOFT SET RESET ALL S E T, ALIVE

Grace O’Connor grew alongside pine trees in the Catskills, New York. Currently, she is a rhetoric, composition, and teaching of English PhD student at the University of Arizona. She has work forthcoming with Rogue Agent Journal and The Adirondack Review.

GRACE O’CONNOR / 2 WORKS

COMA [ , ]

OVERLAP LAPPING FRAMES SOFT SET RESET ALL S E T, ALIVE