Chase Cate

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.