3 Poems by BEE LB
august
finally, i have allowed the world to leave me. in the distance,
a mirror overturned on the ground, reflecting only light.
i have leaned in to passivity. curled my hand around air
without feeling held. the boundaries of the body keep everything
in place. i have chosen myself again, again— if only in choosing not to
leave. a sleepless night followed by another sleepless day. the sky’s threat
held behind lipless clouds. opportunity offered and replaced
by time just getting its feet under it, stretching out into a legless
walk. a door is an awful hard thing to open, let alone to let close.
give up the grief
i am barely an animal
no divine hope
or angelic voice to fill me
just guilt & bile in this manmade palace
abandoned by time
full of idiomatic delights
what’s left will wilt
in the age of hate & desperation
the spirit moves toward time & desire
how will i find my way back to what i want?
flashback
within the confines of living, memory becomes a burden.
a shock to the system. an altercation. when memory
moves through you / movement becomes needed
motion of memory, the body trembles. shakes. pulses.
a flinch shivers through you. the mind flashes. the past\
makes itself known / speaks for itself. voiceless and heard,
it moves through the body. to truly hear the possibility
you must first say it, feel the words on your own tongue
the weight of them a burden / to your jaw alone
following tension, expression of the mouth’s grief
the truth of the mouth is its spit / wet wonder / slick mess
truth of the body / finding knowledge within yourself
borrowed words yours alone. shame spreading through
new growth, your mouth struggling / beneath the weight
of words
BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall on unceded Anishinaabe land in Michigan. they have been published in FOLIO, Figure 1, The Offing, and Harpur Palate, among others. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co and they can be found at patreon.com/twinbrights.
‘begin’ by BEE LB