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Isabelle Correa
gratitude poem #6
How the raspberries in my mind have never stopped
growing. Now whole beaches of fat fruit. An impossible
ocean cradling every creature I’ve ever been. Lightning
strikes the pink pupiled bushes twice and ghosts
are fossilized mid haunting—my mother petrified
in the warmth of a good day, a sister singing in a car
with all the windows down, a friend revealing her sock
drawer, a grandmother gardening, babies babbling
under trees. I could go on. I will. I wonder endlessly,
picking seeds from my teeth, each seed two palms pressed
in prayer: How is there ever magic? How is there ever not?
I Don’t Love You Yet
But our horoscope said we should get stick n poke tattoos
of our favorite animals and now an inked elephant
and a sea turtle the size of a quarter won’t stop fucking
in my dreams. There is the house I built for us
by a lake that does not exist yet but I build imaginary
houses for everyone I meet, even the ones who don’t
open me up like a book to linger over my every verb.
Sure, I am switched on. I am bug eyed and made
stupid by the thought of you driving a car or walking
carefully in the snow or touching me with both hands. Don’t
get me started on your hands. Those titans. I hate them
for being so far away from my body, the one I wake in
every day burning with this not-love, turning
your name in my mouth, swallowing it for good.
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Girls Only Want One Thing
To take their skin off by the river and swim smiling with heads
bobbing like dogs chasing sticks. To wrinkle. To travel
back in time and tell their younger selves the real difference
between lust and love is that love is a seed and lust is a bird
ravenous for seeds. To harvest like bees and feast on soft avocados
and limes and everything green. To bend like water. To break
hearts and bread. To be girls and women and men and lovers
and inimitable fathers of unnameable creatures. To never smile
when they don’t feel like smiling. To bury the word sorry
and see what grows. Perhaps a tree will grow. Perhaps the bark
will know the future and the fruit will taste like the history
of all this wanting. Perhaps they will eat it and offer you nothing.
Isabelle Correa is from Moses Lake, Washington and lives and teaches in Mexico City. Her previously published fiction and poetry can be found online in Trampset, Third Point Press, Maudlin House, and others. Follow her on Instagram @isabellecorreawrites for more poetry.