archangels

a pain yet
to be gone through 

we moved humbly back
Toward each other 

Like cherubs

And I was sad  then
and  I t 
was an actual bloodache

in a dark room at the museum i learned
my boundary of silence 

and that all silence is visual 

and that I hate it

I hated 
The planetarium you worked at and the boy 
who wrote about
The trompe l’oeil and it wet 
his mouth to describe it

AR said The notes for the poem are the only poem

Because sometimes
You  lose
 too much blood and pick parsley 
in the very same week

you used to want to surf
Lake Ontario 
and i wouldn’t stop you

you had an app for it and
i wouldn’t stop anything 

there were wet nights i decided myself
into the twin mattress in the living room
and you didn’t come out 
to look for m e

we made love in july 

In  the neural darkness 
and you woke quietly and went to work
blood on my stolen 
Anthropologie  nightgown 
your name went just as quietly 

like a blade bent over  

it was over with

sometimes when we don’t have function 
sharpness   IS only a shape

To be felt

the green armchair lit
through the fenestrations 
of a plant I bought
when  i loved you

wringing
the prairied neck
of my own body

I think of new ways to put it

i sit in the present 

sucking ginger
from the root

buzzard

gender is a platform shoe 

poetry has become a mouse 
on the highlands 

sometimes we all stand by with flyswatters 
waiting for a shot

i want things to come to me

standing with the day’s kerosene and a language 
i don’t understand 

i help your mother make dinner 

i wAs your vision in a world of paint
and t-shirts

conjured 
like plasma 
or like snow

above the appalachian 
turnpike 

we pass
a flotsam of trucks

america 
home of plastic
home of metal 

fighting 
the lemons 
As they fall 

There is nothing so uniquely 
calcified as your voice on the phone
in Hburg

the grout and the money in it

this country could make me weep

 a sad gun
under the big top 
world

brand persona as camp marketing as camp lemon patterned wine cup as camppppp

the girl who made fun of the hole
in my dress is a nurse now 

I have to gum it down 

interdict

My world was shot 
Clean  

I wore dresses

I shrank them in the 
Dishwater  of the cold  municipal
Laundry room 

Muni cipal 
You taught me that word

Before I had fished through 
the world Long enough you pulled thoughts up 
For me  like stockings
 In the shoe aisle

Bad girl 
You said

And Beyond my years

grace (ge) gilbert is a hybrid writer based in Pittsburgh. they received their MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022, where they now teach. they are the author of 3 chapbooks: the closeted diaries: essays (Porkbelly Press 2022), NOTIFICATIONS IN THE DARK (Antenna Books 2023), and today is an unholy suite (forthcoming; Barrelhouse 2023). their work can be found in 2023's Best of the Net Anthology, the Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, the Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. They teach hybrid collage and poetics courses at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and they are a 2023 Visiting Teaching Artist at the Poetry Foundation. they are passionate about making the hybrid arts accessible to all. find course offerings and more at gracegegilbert.com.