ex communication
Kristen Renzi
I have a purse that no longer adheres. The roughed-up velcro full of suspect scents, old lint.
The tight-lipped tupperware refuses even to slit her mouth and swallow her companion blue bowl.
Honey, I admit it's in bad taste and will likely open a world of harshness you never believed I had in me, but even flies come unstuck off those vast, sticky reams, the ones that you dare call affection.
to egon schiele
Kristen Renzi
the body's shed its scales like horoscopes
and hot sauces a pinch a fist a promenade
contort as bare conceits where "today is
a Six," or "let's have a Two" hover peculiar
to a Vienna in which coffee causes dysentery
but no one stops drinking and to live at all
is effort you drew them wretched and real
you saw in Muehling's filth such exquisite
fodder fathomed sex that blind vagrant's
clumsy hawkings "must this mattery
show?" you'd no need to ask only the dead
lay calm enough to open facing the sky
with brittle fingers you knew through canvas
that No One understands what math
dapples capillaries in the same rainbow
smudge each time where a kick or kiss
both bruise and fucking always equals
fucking over you were so certain in pain
you let them keep on their tiered stockings
Kristen Renzi lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where she earned an MFA in poetry and is currently finishing a PhD in English Literature from Indiana University. She works as an advocate for survivors of physical and sexual violence, and she is passionate about animal welfare issues. She is also a sucker for cotton candy.
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