[ToC]

 

2 POEMS

Brooke Ellsworth

INTEREST IN NO ONE DESIRES EVIL
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Xanthippe

My mother was Athenian. My father was Iroquois. My brother was Floridian. My sister was also Athenian. My other brother was Bosnian. My dog was Israeli. My fish was Off Limits. My grandmother was named after the poet Osip Mandelstam. My secret name was Guadalupe Llorca. John was my Enemy. John was first my Lover. John said I looked like Geraldine Chaplin. My daughter was Susan. She trapped a mouse and named him Otto. My barista was D.A. He called his car Greywolf. In June I swam in the Atlantic. I called the Atlantic from Beartown Mountain. After I returned to the town of Small Windows. My jury’s name was Vikram. My neighbor named me Crazy Rain.

 
             

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INTEREST IN SECOND SIGHT
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Well Four decks can’t carry my death. This son of mine—boy took some serious road rash out of my stomach. My stomach. The diviner was given away with the bulk tea. The girth of my luck. The length of the deck, the reaching.  
             
Ricki It could be a cave. There'd still be joy.  

 

 

 

 

 


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These pieces are part of a larger ode-sequence that came from the time I spent reading the comment threads underneath Youtube videos of Anne Waldman, Morio Higaonna, and a variety of associative paths from there.