Back to Issue Forty-One

Boombox Ode: Enjoy the Silence

BY K. IVER

 

A landline lets me dance with you.

My one-deck and your two-deck

are dialed to 98.5 fm without

an echo. If we speak aloud

this miracle of fiber wire

and radio wave, harmony

could split. From our speakers:

soft synth, a baseline, a choir

reverbing, a guitar riff that rises

and falls, asks and answers. I can’t

see your movement, the bedroom

you’re quiet in. Somewhere, bodies

like ours are pulsing under the same

pink neon to the same words

like violence, break–Bodies like ours

are touching and strangers watch

only because they’re gorgeous.

Let me pretend you’re back in my

bedroom, before my mother found us.

You’ve risen from the pine floor

and pulled me up. You want me

to stand for this. Let me pretend

all I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever needed

is here. Tell me that’ll be us. Soon.

 

 

Because you can’t,

BY K. IVER

 

I stand in front of paintings a long time
and think about the bones once belonging
to you and how Egon Schiele could line
a body into movement. Because you no longer
have a shape, I’ve made a practice of nearness.
A hawk lets me stroke her mid-flight,
I let comets land in my mouth,
when they’re small enough. My lover
pushes all their weight on me because I asked.
They flatten me into astonishment.
Because nothing can astonish you, I tempt
what’s alive by doubting I could love it more.
It’s a neat trick. When I use it, raccoons
visit often, their fingers closed around mud
older than me. Missy, this is me moving on.
There’s a noon rain to get caught in and many
clavicles to behold. I wish you could see this one,
tilting across a century.

 

K. Iver is a nonbinary trans poet from Mississippi. They have a Ph.D. in Poetry at Florida State University. Their work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Boston Review, TriQuarterly, BOAAT, Gulf Coast, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. They are the 2021-2022 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow for the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

Next (Alison Thumel) >

< Previous (Jessica Kim)