Poems
Maggie Golston
Some mornings sin sings
I beg bars, dig lockout.
One likes the spit or hemorrhage, matte
pools at the cunning blisters.
Not until digging
are we alive.
Beg these bars to dig into my arm,
beg this operation not
to stop me. Pills dig
this minuet
of hanging fast to the breakers,
a far banging against ice.
I had milk, talk
until I begged. Then a sliding.
Of blurs of focus I pen arcs,
dark hairshirts not an elevation,
but arbitrary and mine.
From far places, say welcome, my dregs,
for you come until beaten I hang hid.
Men live a bare clarity
that comes over me like pills,
my vague voice
a far din and falter,
‘Far away my good mood, mother,
and night my hair. I will do good
all the same.’
And dragging come hands, traitors, hymns
of arbitration.
One slides off there
at signified singsong,
makes tracks. Verify my tongue
as far dead.
Hands lift up or crumple
and these hands are altered.
‘The blur is stronger, little lady,
harbors will, drugs you like music.’
A naked man, his own voice
coming to mind
after bed and tablets.
‘Our hair is dead before we’re born.’
Men not like objects,
that’s a glass page
with jagged ends for digging,
I’m locked out at strong tide.
I’ll give you my hold, my duration,
my drink
of gin or frayed vodka;
you make believe I return,
my hands some jug of good.
For under these clothes
is a small, drugged star,
a gilded whore,
a cinder.