by Madeleine Mori
Yesterday the sky just couldn’t grip without a tremor
and I couldn’t empty my pockets of song
kept tilling the lint not letting it pile
something about love like a building on fire
It’s always animals that teach me
and only when I’m waist-deep
skimming the bog of my need
for damselflies
a perilous body
a new lure
‘Aleurier’ meaning ‘to attract’
‘L’ours’ meaning ‘the bears’
Night dropped I watched
for the inspiration pornography can provide
on my screen two men approached a woman
as he approached my apartment
Made love made the dream
where two bears held me down
their hulking frames like dams
against the hours
and delicate as with a communion wafer
each took one of my hands onto their tongues
closed the clasp on their gauntlet mouths
I felt the flesh burst beneath bite
the slurred education of pain
crunch of bone like the blowing out
of a bridge’s molded arches
the many dresses of my fingers
teethed open but waving
I woke into gratitude
my cheeks still slick with lube
the bears’ harm having removed
my potential instruments
of harm
MADELEINE MORI is a Japanese-American poet originally from San Francisco. She earned a bachelor's degree in winemaking from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and an MFA from New York University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BOAAT, Cosmonauts Avenue, Neck, Sixth Finch, The Cincinnati Review, and jubilat, among others. She is the Poetry Editor at Pigeon Pages and lives in Brooklyn, where she works as the assistant to Sharon Olds.
Art by Isabella Lill