HONORABLE MENTION, 2023 SMALL ORANGE EMERGING WOMAN POET HONOR

Full Tilt

It’s easy being unsure of our spinning planet creaking on its axis,

of sunspots and meteors exploding on impact,

of a stone flaking off in pieces like petals

from an inflexible flower. It is easy being tangled

and calling it hell, stuck and crying

like a whirlpool for the comfort of a closed mouth.

In one life, you called a rock hurtled from the morning

love. Decay and bloom and photosynthesis all amounting

to an arachnid sense of joy, devilish and scuttling with

each unseemly limb. In another, you held your hands

to your face without fearing the ocean rising. It’s easy

when love is shaped like this: you can write it down

until your hands hurt, you can study it until your eyes

glaze over. In this life, you wake from a dream of marrying

the woman you love only to find you are falling

from the face of a cliff. The burners on your stove hum

and rattle, performing music as only rental kitchens

know how: a whole dubious world overrun, blushing

pink and setting off the smoke detector. You don’t believe

 in unicorns, or at least you don’t believe

in the sin of delay, that missing the boat

is the only thing between the end of the world

and you. It’s easy taking a bite when you know sugar

waits to be crushed by your teeth. Cake can be a rock

hurtled from the right distance. It’s easy, velocity,

hot and hurting and expanding in your chest. The basic

operations of bookbinding ask human hands

for precision above all else. Think of it this way:

the machine of your body

whirring and multiplying, a rock hurtled

from the nearest known galaxy.

Rebecca Martin (she/they) is the author of High-Tech Invasions of the Flesh (Bottle Cap Press, 2022). They are a queer poet, educator, and roller skater with work appearing in Nimrod International Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, Muzzle Magazine, and others. They received an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize and are a graduate of Oregon State University's MFA program, where they were awarded the Graduate Creative Writing Award in Poetry and served as poetry editor for literary magazine 45th Parallel. She currently lives and works in Pittsburgh.