Rose Zinnia is a poet & designer living in Bloomington, Indiana. They are the author of the pamphlet Reset North America To Default Settings, the chapbook Hands, & co-author, with Ross Gay, of River. They are the co-founder of Monster House Press (monsterhousepress.com). In their most recent past life, they were a surgeon from Maine & died in 1946.

2 poems by Rose Zinnia

I AS IN

i as in superglue a muskrat tooth back into a jaw
i as in dented pumpkin memory
i as in deflated basketball consciousness
i as in internet parrot projection
i as in holding uterine lining above a toilet bowl
i as in wide eyed no eye lids what so ever
i as in forecasting a shadow self
i as in interrogating repression with a single light bulb
i as in carving out swallowed memories from muscle mass
i as in for a purpose what for but how
i as in contiguous continental conterminous
i as in stewardess placing a napkin on your thigh pre-prandial
i as in heidegger & derrida stripped of language
i as in adumbrating wolves viewed from a youtube video
i as in please let me say just one true thing in this form
i as in effortless dwell of complex incorrigible decision
i as in water moving across stone
i as in photo stored in a hard drive orbiting earth
i as in swimming like a dog in a river
i as in choreografted into body
i as in set in a vague eden
i as in my fathers influence
i as in why do people laugh when i interact with them
i as in what if all thoughts even this cannot be untethered from ego
i as in ensconced with a detrimental something
i as in my past life as avaricious egyptian emperor committing sororicide
i as in before you were a human you were black radiance
i as in a golden nothing forever
i as in how could you forget

PATRILINEAL

Still in awe that the world just goes

I’ve been standing in the same place

for what feels like a very long time

I am always just arriving or was never

here a river is both singular and plural

water intimating further water

how you tell where one thing ends

another begins despite our attempts

at demarcation I have decided against

brushing my teeth tonight for reasons

I know I could easily overcome

and still may today a customer
called me daddy in a text message
my mom evinced the best part of her day

was helping an elderly woman
lease a new car in a dream

my children are falcons

perched on my shoulders

then they are just
my shoulders