some of them have hands that are on knife-hilts all the time, walking Macbeths who keep repeating marriage vows to excuse the stainless steel between their fingers; they cannot tell their wedding bands from the bands of light glinting off blades used forty one times on bread-crust and one time on something else.
- C. Essington
half way done with college, home and safe in the chlorophylled center of michigan’s palm, okay.
to the new followers. Just broke 600 so, you know, it’s a whole bundle of lovelies. Let me know if you’ve got any questions!
- C. Essington
my lungs, tonight, are fruit- baskets for the wind. I take the peaches right out of the blue-clear blows, and get to the pit; that’s my face going raw.
the breeze-burn is just the rise of blood to the skin, all that red running up to get to the windows of cheeks and pounding cell-sized fists at the border between gale and girl; that’s what I meant by a peach.
- C. Essington
Here’s another couple of photos from my great grandfather Axel’s fishing trip from 1928.
maybe this has been one of those nights that I’ll come back to later, to outline in crayon and label softly, drawing looks out from the eyes like water from a well. well,
all days have sore ribs, burnt nerves, places which go tender under threat but this one feels like something particularly loose and abused enough already, something which will just go to heaven if it’s ever touched again.
there is something memorable about hours way too made of blood to ever bleed.
it’s not going to hurt to put fingers on this: the dim around the pizza box around the carpet around the working anatomies around the exactly seven kidneys.
it’s not going to hurt it’s just going to all come back in through the palm, one pressure at a time, working just like the un-music a heart makes to keep a head.
- c. essington
agh my finger slipped and I’ve
changed my icon againsosorry
your writings, especially your poetry are so well done. I get so excited when you post new ones! Your imagery is so strong, but not overpowering and your voice is just wonderful. Please carry on <3
Thank you for your sincerity and kindness, hearing that people read and get something from my 3 a.m. labors makes it enormously more valuable. I will certainly keep hitting keys with my fingernails in sequences that I think embody pretty ideas so long as sweet eyes like yours traipse about the page.
drawing excerpt.
kayaking in the winter means you’re confident or lonely
running uphill until everything, including your name, hurts means that there is something in your body which you’ve missed missing.
writing codes in plain english out of words that symbolize nothing but themselves means you’ve taken up poetry again and should stop or get a kayak by this time, next december.
- c. essington
~I have a flash fiction piece published in Newfound Journal~
it’s here: http://newfoundjournal.org/current-issue/flash-claire-oleson/
Queer Writer, Repd by Janklow & Nesbit, 2020 Center for Fiction Fellow, Brooklyn
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