The Snack Cakes are in the Freezer
and so is the new loaf of bread
The garden is in the freezer
and so, the worms come, too
I put the eviction notice in the freezer
next to the eggs and, for when they don’t hatch,
the ice cream and a spoon
I let the urn burn with freeze
Every morning I grab
a handful of grass slick with dew and November’s
seven am from the ice box
carry it around
hold it to my cheek when I am homesick
We move our bed to the freezer
in the morning we are stiff but still shivering—
our bodies beg us to stay alive this way
We remember our childhoods:
popsicle sweat and late-May pools
We remember standing
in front of the living-room window’s a/c unit
shielding us from a thick July
We remember
everything that is cold
is refreshing
I’ll Scoop Out Your Eyeballs
for GJR
On the deep-blue days
the slow days
the days wrapped
in unwashed sheets
I love you
My hands are river basins
with water that runs
dark and deep
up from the bend
of my wrist and around
my thumb
its banks are tender
green irises bloom in pairs
wilted, heavy-lidded at first opening
On the days you can’t even spread your fingers
I’ll untangle your lashes awake
scoop out your eyeballs
rinse off the silt and salt
shelter them from the too-bright sun
in a gentle shadow and they’ll float
with a current that takes its time
you know how they say there must be something in the water
there is something here and only here
in the scoop of these palms
in the iris root-thread that stitch these hands sturdy
and in the holes left behind from the needle
there is a dark worth leaping into
a dark with hands waiting for you
***
Adrian Sanders is a poet & mail-slinger living in Elizabethtown, KY. Her work has appeared in Juke Joint, Jelly Bucket, Lammergeier, GASHER, Indiana Review Online, and others. You can find her watching movies with her partner and chasing around a toddler with Bob Dylan hair.
***
image: Madeleine Tomasoa is the co-creator of Koening Zine and the current Assistant Editor for Sledgehammer Literature. They enjoy watching cars go around in a circle.portfolio: madeleinetms.carrd.co
Rejection Letters 