EMILY KENDAL FREY
A GREAT PAIN IS COMING
Open your amoeba
A column of light
Older than waves
Or clothes at the bus stop
You made
A barricade, words rolled
From the binary
You knew you would
Die with or without love
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*** ** ***
GETTING ENOUGH SOMEWHERE
Today I was driven
To protect your life
I swept our small room
After the argument
Stylish blackout curtains
Spider plant babies
Central air
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*** ** ***
BIG DRINKER
Where is my colander
You keep mentioning
Your wife
My spice collection
I brought my orgasm
Us in the tender
River the trees
See everything
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*** ** ***
I DON’T WANT MY LIFE
To flap at the edge of time
I’ve outgrown lying
Put me in the lake’s
velvet arms
Fall me mute through
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*** ** ***
I AM NOT GOING TO SLEEP ON YOUR FUTON
I am skunk-spraying my -ness
All over this city
I miss every house every person I’ve loved
Has left
The hanging light
How my boobs were there
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*** ** ***
IN THIS NEO-EMPATHIC ERA
The sharpest shard
Sleeps in the softest Hey
I still have relatives
Who grew food
Troublemaker
Wanting all that
Moon on you
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*** ** ***
I WANTED TO LIVE LONG ENOUGH
To take care of something
A clump of moss
An angle, rotating
When I saw you at the party
I thought of my mom, not sleeping
The way
A mountain gets stitched with paths
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*** ** ***
ALMOST EVERYONE WILL TRY
To take your power
I don’t want my children
To hide in the sugar grasses
My heart takes up
My entire body
Thank you to everyone
Who left
Thank you to everyone
Who didn’t
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EMILY KENDAL FREY
Emily Kendal Frey is the author of The Grief Performance and Sorrow Arrow. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is a teacher and therapist.
To download a printable PDF version of this page, click here.
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A Dozen Nothing 