Savannah Cooper-Ramsey
Appetite
call a woman’s paunch, “kangaroo pouch”; remember your special friend
at a certain age; intimacies aligned
to shatter a matter like must or the purple of the royal we
a special pocket or
guided by the stars
inked dots on a map,
the body of a mariner
narrative or
hypotheticals,
contrary to fact,
scattered, palaver of perennial
objective knowing, the who
a leader acts upon
forgotten, left baptized
crustaceans and rational mysteries
----
shepherd
drops his crook
becomes the crop
mountainous exposure, the moment to breathe
the unteetering cloven creature
who wilst not teeter
tumbling
down
a revisionist poem, abridged or in a context like class
room
prow whet for tonight’s champagne.
toilet’s guts, stronger,
ever more insipid
liquids /
strip the copper pipes!
sidestep habits like
pronouns
personal:
self of self-absolving,
crown / when a bleat creeps into
laugh
roof hot from sun, cat
hot within
getting there
at last narrative’s motion in erasure: one
directional.
let liveries for stable rent
divine this place:
ask the has-been, nest-catched,
will babies
cry
in the heaven of the rose?
a revisionist not-prose stated / like so
, go slower:
drop evil in a tower
name him like a little
*this will be a harder poem
begrudged
shrug
gnawed nephews swallowed
in-famed for the
hungered eponymous postulate adverbial of object, led on by legs of his own
smells’
momentary distraction: a pregnant
woman /parses the
motives of apart and true.
a duck in galoshes
must hate the lake / must think a laundered scent allure
comprehend tenses perfumed with Wisconsin
a trip for business
see memory in/for remembrance of
grammar automatic
someone else’s
redolent
performance, in steam running out.
consciousness
addictive.
I have a million delusions for what I do.
I am starving.
Subject to Here
subject to here
o r s
a n u phasing
s o o
antique futures
out from the bevel
wheeling a deal
like the path of a marble:
breached, latticed-
lashed to a level.
odes rolling hollows,
Corinthian, edgy
magnanimous swill,
weary.
swallowed in
hallowed habits of maybe.
bell-less and wary
bothered time.
donation as constant
as pining and tithing
or holding a hearing
or thoughtless reading
beleaguered, we rise doughy
woven
donning wisdoms
winsome forgetting
lengths too tremulous to mime phantoms, fathering
links too tenuous to mine patterns, pithy
a pittance
of matter
this bowing and reigning
a tubular rubric
lightness portending
smiles liturgical
none so ample as our tentative needing
mate, sacks sadder
make spines wider
fray the lung’s ends
battened and hatchless
patience. there, there now.
we’ve almost begun.
On April 3rd
Mouthing a cake pop, toddler head bobs to
the Beach Boys legs swinging in a
Starbucks pitstop before the pediatric
dentist. Before, all fours on the floor,
bleeding bacon grease into paper towel,
toppled tray rebalanced, a neighbor
child asks, "are you doing that so my mom
doesn't find out?" I reply, "It isn't a secret; I
don't want to leave a mess". Five times
daily, the dogs go out pulling at leashes
while my held toddler laughs. For three
loads of laundry, we visit the next-door
basement six times. My toddler laughs,
hits my face with a dryer screen. I worry
that they laugh to compensate for my
reactions. The glare-y neighbor hosts Queer
Passover. Somebody, well dressed and
hired, leafblew their backyard this
afternoon. There's happy prattle. Magnolia,
stinky sweet, slimes up the brick underfoot.
Savannah Cooper-Ramsey teaches academic and creative writing and Italian language as a Generalist in the English Department of the Community College of Philadelphia. Savannah is the author of Little Murder Poems (Moonstone Press, 2024) and the artist's book Not Fit For Print: Forthcoming Titles (Waterhouse, Ltd, 2018). Find Savannah's poems in Bomb Magazine, Bedfellows, Cul-de-sac of Blood, and Serotonin, among other publications.