E. Kristin Anderson
Find an Answer in Floorboards or Flowers
(a golden shovel after Kesha)
This summer I hold myself in the shadow of honey; I don’t
remember how to be warm. Show me the water and I’ll care
to raise hell, carry light in a rosewood bowl—I know who’s
planning a coup. I’ll stay, finish the fairy tale while watching
TV. Have you seen me? I’m the woman in black boots when
your bones ache, the woman wrapped in rowan and fire as we
traverse discomfort on pavement. And it’s the music tearing
lace from limb, just listen. This noise is how to ruin me. Let it
disappoint your dogs when I split my mouth just to bloody up
the sidewalk. Keep turning. If you try to run now, I’ll catch you
in another net, hang you from the palest of pines. So you know
why I’m like this—why my rage is in a jar with berries from that
road, why I spread it like jam over pavement, dressed in magic
and chiffon. Watch me as I terrify the best of you, still—that
is the gift I offer from behind my eyes. Here: A little ocean we
knew is finding its way back to me, salting my veins. So I’ve got
a new plague to shake out, an animal mouth, safe with nobody
watching. I try to remember another song, the one I know can
cover my cold shoulders. So the story comes—I wait to touch
the green past the glass, a reckoning, the dirt damp and ready for
this breaking. Open me and take my teeth—now you can be sure.
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E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press), and Hysteria: Writing the female body (Sable Books, forthcoming). Kristin is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks), Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), and Behind, All You’ve Got (Semiperfect Press, forthcoming). Kristin is an assistant poetry editor at The Boiler and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked nights at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on twitter at @ek_anderson.
