Kindall Fredricks

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.