Poem in Which I Take Too Much
The chest cracks mother and so
the little door opens
its wood as cool as
a memory sparrowing
back into dirt my grandmother’s name
now the frog
in the flower’s throat This is the body untroubling itself
of its nectary
this is the hook whispering through the worm
this is this
this is another way I split
myself open
On Facebook a grandmother
berates a dead teenager
for hanging herself after a boy shared her nude pictures
as a joke as just a joke
If we ALL had took that much time to morn thered be
no woman left
Sometimes i can’t even breathe—
Each day the sun hides in the water
and unhooks its blackened trees
popping them apart one by one as it belly-drags to the top
as impatience pushes my mom’s smile up
like a cuticle everyone is falling out of love with me
I carry myself like snuff coaled
in a cheek now i can’t tell the difference between want
and revulsion god i don’t even know if i ever made it out
of that apartment
i can reach for a nasal strip or a pill
and pull out his hair
i can be asleep
and the tin-pan bones of my fingers will rattle
with were tf r u I’m about to turn around from my pink flip-phone
because time has a Moro reflex
and everything gutters into everything else
and i am still afraid to pick it up
You can’t say i didn’t try my friend texts no
my husband says
and the only thing i want from this body
is for it to just tap
I’m here
Kindall Fredricks (she, her) is a practicing registered nurse and an MFA candidate at Sam Houston State University, focusing on both poetry and the intersection of literature and the medical sciences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Drift, New Letters, Grist, Sugar House Review, DIALOGIST, Passages North, Quarterly West, Rust + Moth, Menacing Hedge, The Academy of American Poets, and more. She has been nominated for both Best of the Net and Best New Poets.