Emily Skillings

for JA I flutter in order to enter the phrase’s silver. Jackdaws have launched nearby this time, silk green and ripped, the movement a kind of chafing thinking. Oh he’s marking terrain right there— right there with his unmade song. The shadow kids whip fronds, froth air up into heat, pure and simple “violence of the eye.” Wild iris ink, wet in the margin’s stage. Well, hadn’t this testament begun to carry its chime in stripes? That’s when I knew he was going away from me, towards the sound. Like the ring on the table it can’t be decentered. Rim around the recent. Ashes, ashes, A bright tangled seeming.

The first line is a row of girls, twenty-five of them, almost a painting, shoulders overlapping, angled slightly toward you. One says:I’m myself here. The others shudder and laugh through the ribbon core that strings them. They make a tone tighter by drumming on their thighs and opening their mouths. The girls are cells. The girls are a fence, a fibrous network. One by one they describe their grievances. Large hot malfunctioning machines lie obediently at their sides. Their shirts are various shades of ease in the surrounding air, which is littered with small cuts. One will choose you, press you into the ground. You may never recover. The second-to-last line has a fold in it. The last line is the steady pour of their names.