swelling vortexes and vertices

cavalcades and brigades marching

by estranged relatives with terminal

conditions precipitated and dated,

 

split into terms and conditions to be

checked off and consulted;  sober

speculations undermined by lucent

laboratory examinations  relentless

grandiloquence, screaming katydids

 

belate engines   belay the moment of

belittlement   portray the deviance

deep in the ship bone skeleton   the

holes in my knowledge bloom,

swell tumescent malignant

 

it builds up like orgasm    shudders out

when i call it by its name

it shouldn’t hurt  it shouldn’t hurt  it

shouldn’t hurt   it should be absolution

devolution restitution  how old must i get

to want to get older  weight and want so sweet

and sure  undetermined undermined euphoria

lying in wait weight want  need want to want to

feel to   hurt   push past

push future     push into push on

all the supple iterations of present  panic

present breathless shudder hard hard

harder my earthquake body hot and

shaking fissured and left

waiting

atop ambivalent pyramids sinking

into quicksand bloated elliptical

degrees and qualifications beyond

you can’t do anything new now

 

evaluated and exhausted, overly

wrought thought developed into

negative shades intransigent, my

moments all strewn into nothingness,

steaming sunbake  latent latex ache

 

passionate simplicity  engaged dire

from babels   you feel so outlandish,

unlanded moorless, home-aching

threaded of migraine brain matter

the sickness of this age

 

i’m trying to be a good memory

 

 

 


Kinsey Cantrell is a Poetry BA/MA student at Miami University of Ohio. She was a finalist in the Rabbit Catastrophe Press Real Good Poem Prize. This piece is part of a larger work exploring themes of neoliberalism and chronic mental and physical illness.