Levi Faulk

Embodiment

Inhabiting my body for the first time,
my home,
feeling the breadth and heaviness
of it where before
I sought to make myself smaller,
now I am vast and spacious.
I own me and all the space
I inhabit contain me
and my body hums with being.

Start

(start)
Clear my throat.
Paper crinkles.
Doesn’t measure up.
(start again)
Stale air
and bruised ego
in a dusty room
and I can’t remember --
(start again)
-- no I didn’t mean for this
to be about that.
She taunts me,
haunts me --
please, let me get
just a bit more medicine in me
before I have to --
(start again)

Previously Published in the chapbook Blood on the Vine