Megan Burns

Without

It is dangerous to love anyone

to love

to create people you will die for

dawn pinks its way through the dark morning

poems call out through the computer’s invisible speakers

about rainforests, about “natural”

what a concept

I was abed alone

except in social media apps

where we half exist

our made up lives held up against our made up lives

if you were the only one

this would be something

you can go to a place where they will pay you to work

and what you care deeply about will not matter

this is a schism, a job description

she will scare you into a type of listening

or you will die

or anyway you will die

maybe listening you will hear this

the long hot line of the poem invading you

we will say you look tired when what we mean

is how can you still be living

I want to say there is a brilliance

& I have been so long underground

here in my grief as if losing was an invitation

these are all the ways we walk about in the world

watch as I break against everything, invisible

nothing to lose then this: You have to wake up

and take your life or it takes you

if you never consequent your actions

then a type of wording silences, say you this

so I’ll tell the pretties what they want to hear

glamour the water falling, glamour the night’s cover

what you can explain away does not equal an explanation

Affair

trespass not a scene you or she could understand

& in that way, what we agreed was just sex

I took so I could write about it

exchange deleted, but I keep

a hoarding of language my clutch

hunger once as he would say a need to control

& somewhat close to truth

but aren’t we pulled along

face like a blank slate even when he says

I want you              I wonder

what does that mean            let’s not

discuss what we can’t disclose

I like to think about the view from outside

where drawn a circle we did in private undertones

prosper, I have known the knot of marriage

how slippery it is to be given to another

switched place this dagger     what we do is let

other people bound our troubled parts

look baby,       this lifetime is a drizzling

time is no matter        we dig in      unable to quit

this madness pretending the world

holds our desire

Megan Burns is the publisher at Trembling Pillow press and runs the Blood Jet Poetry Reading Series in New Orleans. Her third book Commitment was just released from Lavender Ink.

Megan Burns is wearing a Unicorn Buckle mactaggart necklace and her doll is holding a mulit-chains mactaggart piece