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"spring" and "This Is For All" by Kyla Houbolt

spring

thinking about eunuchs

which may be absurd since

I never had what they lost

but still.

also railroad tracks, unused

for years

also the pattern spilled

birdseed makes on the porch floor:

a means of divination,

surely, if I could read it,

and punctuation. did you know

they didn't used to have it? but somehow

managed.

a tooth is sort of shaped

like a wooden clothespin, the kind

without a spring.

now I've done it. It is dead

ugly winter and I want spring

so badly it's a sickness

like a missing body part.

possibly how a eunuch feels.




This Is For All


For all of everything that is

not in books, nor on the internet,

all the wild truth only to be found

under our shoe soles on pavements or

in the desert, sand underneath bare feet

on a beach, washing out the way it does

all around the foot so leaving a little hill

right under the center of the sole and you

can't help but wiggle a little then to make it

go flat.

Or in the woods, where you really

have to spend some time paying attention

in a way you never could learn to do in any

school unless you are ignoring the teacher

with great commitment so that the air stops

being so shy and begins to whisper to you

directly.

For all of this, I offer thanks.

For you, you truths, you body of being

here. We have ignored you for far too long.

Please stay with us, we need you desperately,

stay like the trees do and the rocks. How sad

we have become without you.




Kyla Houbolt (she, her), born and raised in North Carolina, currently occupies Catawba territory in Gastonia, NC. Her first two chapbooks, Dawn's Fool and Tuned were published in 2020. More about them on her website, https://www.kylahoubolt.com/. Her individually published pieces online can be found on her Linktree: https://linktr.ee/luaz_poet. She is on Twitter @luaz_poet.

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