3 Poems by Carly Gove

current events

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yesterday, Juno fell into Jupiter’s orbit

and they got married all over again.

bitter, fighting from the start, Juno

dug freshly manicured nails into Ganymede and Callisto and

called herself crazy, she flung them to the edges of

the solar system. “you are mine again,”

she said.

 

yesterday, someone got shot. they

bled on my pleather seats and i did not cry.

“you are mine again,” said the gun

and i looked straight down the barrel

 

today, i am sitting with my legs crossed 

thinking about the Iron Giant and all of my favorite

Springsteen covers and pretending not to exist.

in sign language, the clouds tell me “you

are mine, always, still, forever,” and so i dig

nails into my palm

until they break skin 

​

 

beach day​

 

her lips were the first to go,

plump and pillowy, meaty treats

plucked from a peach-ripe girl 

on a hot july day

 

she lay very still

and allowed the largest gull to perch on her breasts,

claiming territory and protection from

sandpipers

 

eventually,

she persuaded the sand to make way for a body, 

a hole dug with shoulder blades

and she never came back

 

 

bubbles 

 

a few summers ago, 

the world exploded in a sweaty dusty bubble,

a pop snap drip of soap

reflecting rainbows in my cousins eyeballs,

made them blind,

made them wary of the air in their lungs.

the winds were colliding, they tried to hold onto their dandelion tails but

they got sticky white tornadoes instead

lifting houses breaking a slipper-footed ankle,

winds that wailed names of witches in empty hallways and

bedrooms. they saw fathers who held broken beer bottles

and heavy steel doors more firmly than they ever held children, men

who screamed slut underneath their tongues and got it stuck in their eyelashes kinda

like the way dandelion seeds

stick to fields of grass, golden

grass in their backyard, the kind we could crouch in as kids

and the kind that makes you rich,

we hid but

only i got to stay hidden. i didn’t get dragged out on my belly,

i didn’t watch my friends die that summer,

my dandelion seeds are still here in my pocket,

they’re a little crushed now

from the gentle pressing of your head on my chest,

and the hurricane

but they’re still here and i haven’t spent them yet.

i will save them for you.

i will reconstruct your world

out of dandelion seeds and glue and spit and and sweat,

i will take your gentleness 

and keep it safe 

until you can use it again.

you don’t have to keep blowing bubbles,

but please remember that i am and

i am doing it so that one day 

you will look up and remember sunny days on grass yards,

and you will learn how again.