Four poems
"OK Scott I’m moving out now."
"Listen I am just trying to wait in line for an Impossible Burger after crying in my car & I don’t know how to interpret this moment of ambiguous & highly commercial loneliness"
"Walking along the Susquehanna River there is a personal strength I am almost reluctant to uncover"
"Aubade overlooking the highway"
grace (ge) gilbert
"OK Scott I’m moving out now."
"Listen I am just trying to wait in line for an Impossible Burger after crying in my car & I don’t know how to interpret this moment of ambiguous & highly commercial loneliness"
"Walking along the Susquehanna River there is a personal strength I am almost reluctant to uncover"
"Aubade overlooking the highway"
grace (ge) gilbert
"A Violet Note" by James Abbott McNeill Whistler; Chalk and pastel on grey paper; 10 7/8 x 7 1/8 in; 1885; open source from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
severance is an IKEA bookshelf
i’ve left for dead
the curb a morgue we never meant
2 fill
O kitchen-light / the moment
so hot it re-enters
like a crowbar
i am handing u a phillip’s head screwdriver
remember
we are fucking
in a pile
of packing peanuts
or on the air mattress
that structurally can’t fathom
this much attention
O spot-cleaning o candid familiar body
in the dark
our love is a room
i can’t take with me
this heart this dim reluctant muscle
i am standing before it 1 more time
i am tasked
w/ such impossible corners
of Memory
Listen I am just trying to wait in line for an Impossible Burger after crying in my car & I don’t know how to interpret this moment of ambiguous & highly commercial loneliness
lately i’ve been feeling
like a staged interpretation
of myself
i am always Ending Up
in these sore
constellations
of people
I am always slack
against the real
Walking along the Susquehanna River there is a personal strength I am almost reluctant to uncover
O harmony o shot-thru
aggregate sunburn
of a love
this is the itch
of tenacity
aren’t we so, so lost
aren’t we cursed
with the continuance
of water
Aubade overlooking the highway
walking up the hill
a moment ensues
in the broke-open self;
the city a subtitle
across the plane
of sight,
traffic a concise
duration. lately i am in need
of danger
in love; precarity
a darling
arrowhead, my pathology
no plain underfoot
thing--
What do you need
like an open throat?
i want to ask, Or
can’t it be exciting
how anything
one step forward
could lose
itself, a wide
perfect
crisis, highway
the last thing
to forgive
a body ?
O moonlight o laconic
posture
in traffic there is something
in the red thin
light
so clean so
dangerous
that makes me
need you
O cinema o thing
of my fantasy
if love is a gift
I am doing with it
what a child would
wrappings strewn
across the ground
small body curled
unintelligible ribbon
O hillside o mouth angled
toward action
to say I have loved you
is to say i have stood
quietly
on a hill &
imagined
so perfectly
a moment ensues
in the broke-open self;
the city a subtitle
across the plane
of sight,
traffic a concise
duration. lately i am in need
of danger
in love; precarity
a darling
arrowhead, my pathology
no plain underfoot
thing--
What do you need
like an open throat?
i want to ask, Or
can’t it be exciting
how anything
one step forward
could lose
itself, a wide
perfect
crisis, highway
the last thing
to forgive
a body ?
O moonlight o laconic
posture
in traffic there is something
in the red thin
light
so clean so
dangerous
that makes me
need you
O cinema o thing
of my fantasy
if love is a gift
I am doing with it
what a child would
wrappings strewn
across the ground
small body curled
unintelligible ribbon
O hillside o mouth angled
toward action
to say I have loved you
is to say i have stood
quietly
on a hill &
imagined
so perfectly
About the Author
grace (ge) gilbert is a poet and lyric essayist among other things. their chapbook, 'NOTIFICATIONS IN THE DARK' is forthcoming with Antenna Books in 2022. their essay collection 'the closeted diaries' is forthcoming with Porkbelly Press in 2022. their work has been featured in The Adroit Journal, Ninth Letter, the Offing, ANMLY, Pidgeonholes, Hobart, and elsewhere. they have received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and City of Asylum. an MFA @Pitt, grace also loves cheese, macarons, their partner Boen Wang, and their cat Honey.
About the Work
"I was dumped during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, packed my bags, and slept on my sister's floor for a few months. during the day I would stalk my ex's Spotify activity and cry, walk along the Susquehanna, and/or write this little collection of abject/plague-breakup poems. I look at these poems as a sort of reckoning with the inability to brood/mourn socially during these times -- but also as an ode/gesture toward Impossible Burgers, my need, my hope, and unattaching from another human being."
grace (ge) gilbert is a poet and lyric essayist among other things. their chapbook, 'NOTIFICATIONS IN THE DARK' is forthcoming with Antenna Books in 2022. their essay collection 'the closeted diaries' is forthcoming with Porkbelly Press in 2022. their work has been featured in The Adroit Journal, Ninth Letter, the Offing, ANMLY, Pidgeonholes, Hobart, and elsewhere. they have received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and City of Asylum. an MFA @Pitt, grace also loves cheese, macarons, their partner Boen Wang, and their cat Honey.
About the Work
"I was dumped during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, packed my bags, and slept on my sister's floor for a few months. during the day I would stalk my ex's Spotify activity and cry, walk along the Susquehanna, and/or write this little collection of abject/plague-breakup poems. I look at these poems as a sort of reckoning with the inability to brood/mourn socially during these times -- but also as an ode/gesture toward Impossible Burgers, my need, my hope, and unattaching from another human being."
