Zoë Bracken’s poetry is an ache felt but not quite named, a joy that spirals out of control, an inner and outer critic. Her work is informed by her time attending and working at Frost Valley Farm Camp, and so often digs into her relationship with the outdoors as much as her bonds with the people she cares about. Bracken is from New York City, a Sociology major in the Class of 2019 who identifies strongly as a Scorpio. She has also worked for three years in the Poughkeepsie Farm Project’s youth programs. In the following poems, she plays with form and rhythm, veiling and revealing moments as poignant as they are tender and hard-hitting.
river run
in the catskills i dream about space travel and light pollution
coming up steaming from the concrete
cool and grey but not as cold as the water that springs and runs
miles and miles and miles.
shivering, we hold hands, so the tide does not pull us apart
step wide in faltering crescent moons
searching for bodies caught under the rocks.
they told us about the child who got
tugged away from the rest
in a game of fox and hound, after heavy rainfall.
stretch out! they had said,
and hold on tight!
i don’t remember his name, but
i do know that it took three days and three nights
to find a cool and greying body
and his father broke through chains of arms
just to hold him.
silver spoon
my friend told me that it is someone else’s job to clean our internet. they take out the video clips of people who torture their pets, and the snap shots of naked little girls looking shyly at the camera. they sit all day in a room, she said. staring at those things so that we don’t have to. eyes trapped on screens flashing.
we sit around the kitchen table and decide which fruits we want to buy. which are the most ethical and from where. one says “only in season” and the other: “anything but bananas.” i think about a bitter grapefruit, halved and sprinkled with sugar. sugar’s no good, either. a silver spoon digs out the flesh.
this business is harder than i thought it would be. i’m either too good at coping or not good enough. and both at once, it would seem. she recommends medication but i wonder if it is realer this way. if i only need it because i cannot stop thinking about the truth and the only way anyone doesn’t breathe water into their lungs is because they perfected the art of wiping memory.
we’re cleaning the internet and it is not dirty as soil. red tape stretches across my built-in camera so that no one might look in and see me topless or bottomless, or both. she notices, smirking, says she leaves hers on. puts on her mother’s silk negligee to peel it off again. she makes plenty this way, she says, easily, she says.
stick and pokes
you dream of california and i dream of new york
or the other way around.
unsplit we lie next to each other, spilling out secrets bloodied
&boldened by a shared history or murky memory
unlike the others, unlike
the neutral and liminal
searching for the spaces between knuckles and
under collar bones
inside dirty bed sheets or
tendrils of smoke
amma sarah, amma sarah, amma sarah
I am:
going somewhere where the sun shines and
I do not always remember how to replace its warmth
with something colder
So I plunge feet-first into desert sand
scorching
burning
melting
If I find pleasure in the pain
does it count as pleasure?
I exist primarily in the dense dust clouds.
find myself
being pulled deeper into the spaces between the grains
try to make myself so empty that I have no full to offer
but somehow my body still finds a way
to long for cool depths
which drag bodies under.
I know that to see the river
would be to lose all hope
I cannot look into her face of understanding
without diving in
nor let my fingers graze the surface
without needing more
to feel the way your lips part around my index finger
when I fold myself into you
as you unravel
breath hitching.
I do not want for a breeze in baking heat.
I am desert mother.
I do not want for children.
I do not want for lovers.
Shuffling, coughing, scratching, whirring, sipping, dripping
and I know I must not listen
and i know
i must not and
i know and i know and i know