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Welcome to Not bad!, Talk Vomit’s Sunday morning poetry series. Today we are featuring three poems from New Hampshire poet Zoë Kay.

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Remnant
I lay and flesh covers
bone, gnawed gore
stretched too thin across my limbs
and I remember what the pressure
of pressure feels like.

The river swells and I submit
to a deep desire to be
a part of the Cenozoic soil.

Hollow eyes against white
bellied creatures, small and
limbless

Fossil fragments leave my pockets
threadbare, the heaviness too
much to bear. skin still scraping
soft bone, my fingertips linger.

The river becomes you or maybe you become it
and I pulse that desire to be washed
clean and the current takes me
carrying heavy palms still soaked
in grief from a lost era.

Brain against body the burden of bone slowly peels back
the flesh that I love only to cover again.
the river lulls;
it’s you it’s you it’s you,

and I answer.

*

The 59th Street Bridge Song
She turned the car around like the Arizona sun would be gone
forever if we decided not to chase after it.
Her eyes glittered in the golden hour,
cheeks covered in freckles that hadn’t existed before
today. Our sun scorched supernova expanding
with red rock heat.

I start to ask for another red Skittle and,

Shhh baby Groovy is on the radio

5 more clicks, an even 15 decibels and
she serenades me with our favorite song

just kickin down the cobblestones
lookin for fun and feelin groovy

Her fingers weave into mine against my bare
thigh, prickly heat on five pressure points

Finally we find our temporary home and I can’t
help but stare while she lays hands beneath head
to count the constellations in the sky. Slow even blinks
match slow heavy breaths and I count the constellations
on her cheeks. Every blink of her doe eyes I see stardust.
Every inch of our small universe glows with that same magic.

Skin against skin speckled with her stardust,
the canyon beauty pales in comparison to the
canyon in her collarbones. Pale yellow moon
light follows my fingertips and her eyes stay
closed this time while she hums Paul and Art
dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.

And I sink into the Earth and into her and the
nights magic swallows me whole.

*

First Glimpse of Sun
monday morning woke us the same
way a mother wakes her baby.
her blurred sunlight and birdsong
soften the blow of seven o’clock.

we stumble through
our morning routine

clumsy

with anticipation
of soft warm earth.

almost alabaster –
our skin steps out
of winter’s hiding
and the faint memory
of splotched freckles
and peeled off
sunburn come back to life.

sprawled in a porch side sun spot,
we take a few minutes to absorb
each ray. coffee steam curls
and disappears

into
thin air.

my lips meet her cheek i feel her
dimple deepen and she turns.
her lips
catch mine effortlessly and linger a little
bit longer, kisses between giggles that won’t
stifle, like childhood sits
fluttering on our fingertips.

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boop boop

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