broken sestina
my doctor diagnoses me with terminal futurity;
which I name amalgam that bright alive thing;
after those leaden hands
after lead hands
diagnosis; after diagnosis
desperation for your hands reaching
reaching, diagnosis ties my hands
behind my back so that I can’t;
reach out for you silly this way
to comfort diagnosis I read to it
I read to it many poems about confusion
this makes it feel; seen
feelings seen, with eyes always in; backwards
the body keeping score
me, begging for the mercy rule
merciful paradox of my inability to see;
the contents of this weight I feel between
the blades of my shoulders, pinching me together like wings on a fly
weight is the foundation of this; being
being is a kind of weight
demanding there is something still to be said;
so much to be said about naming
which references a kind of nostalgia;
for a pain that has moved on
a pain that has moved on
is an overture; ghost tone; window;
a flashback of a place only remembered in a dream
in a dream, those you loved, still with their hands
in a dream, a wish for another; world
in another world, an inoculation of intimate failure
in another world, the claim this is the best
in the best possible, fiction, like all of this;
the best possible is you, your quiet subtones of subsumption
you subsume
ask me to open
again I open
again and again
Chase Cate is an MFA student in poetry at Colorado State University, where they serve as the Assistant Managing Editor for Colorado Review. Their work is interested in the cosmic, the mundane, the moving, and the space between. Their poems and ramblings can be found in Defunkt Mag, Literary Forest, and Beyond Words. When they aren't reading or writing, they love to watch movies, drink coffee, steal back small pieces of their time from the capitalist machine, and sing karaoke with their friends. They can be found on instagram @chasecateart and Twitter @chase36273419.