Three Poems

Lips

He used to try to kiss me so my eyes closed, but they just closed shut like a baby
doll’s—almost all the way. (Not quite.) We didn’t touch in summer — my skin
cells usually soaked up too much pollen. Everything around us tasted like dirt—
even the air. Especially tongues. Especially the sticky brown filling that drips
from my eyebrows, under my fingernails, into my eyeballs. I normally shed
my lips every two days without him. They dry and chip off. I peel them, limb-heavy.

I don’t know what to do with my new lips, so they just soak up the heavy
brown liquid from my eyebrows—like sweat and pencil lead, pooling. I baby
my lips and my eyebrows, craft them into the same shape, and I shed
my real limbs, arms getting tired of picking out and off, hairs and scraps of skin
“She’s all lips and eyebrows,” they say. He liked that. A teacup of pollen water drips
down my peeling lip. I caught it in the storm, the water. All of the wet dirt

pooled, and the blossoms floated up. I crouched, with my teacup, in the dirt
and contemplated the wettest petal. Like lip skin. Delicate, but stuck, heavy
when it comes to taking it off its hinge. The camera cuts to me, dripping
blood, trying to un-hinge my lip. Flower hinges are for little girls, little babies,
playing “Who loves you,” who does not? He does not. Like ripping little skin-
needles from a nail bed. I used to peel my grapes before eating them. Shed

and sheer them. How can I pluck myself clean again, now, having shed
you. Especially green grapes, to cut the sour, to see the veins. Dropped in the dirt
They soak up brown liquid you can’t brush off. “That’s why we don’t skin
our grapes,” Mom says. No one I’ve ever loved has felt, in their bones, limbs,
that it’s good to grow to a point where silence is ok. Chatty-in-love, like a baby
learning its first words, repeating, dog, dog, dog. “Do you hear me,” drips

from the words, dog, dog. Snapping at the little bugs that move the air, like drips
of water, like champagne bubbles sparking. Dog. Out in the backyard in its shed,
belly rubbed in dirt. Everything a dog is supposed to do comes to a dog. As a baby,
nothing came to me—why my instincts are to find people who will treat me like dirt.
Why, speaking, everything comes out staccato and full sentences. Why I am heavy,
why anyone’s heavy. Nothing surprises me, everything is dull and dumb. My skin

feels like grape skin. Peeling off, lips first. Like the little lips of the grape skin,
where the stem gets pulled out. My stem’s been pulled out. My juices are dripping
out, mopped up by anyone who shows up behind me, dragging their heavy limbs
across the floor. The camera cuts to me, trying to slip out of my skin, shedding
my skin in the dirt. He’s trying to mop up the dirt. The soapy water makes more dirt,
and all I wanted was for you to be clean when you wanted to be clean, baby.

Beo

I’m looking for my real life Beowulf
(because there’s nothing I want less, so
it must be good for me). We have just

enough in common. We were both born
in the wrong bodies. Which is good.
We wouldn’t have taken care of our own.

We are martyrs. (There’s nothing our
Christian mothers hate more.) We know
that we baby our bodies to make sacrifice

more dramatic. Rules: eat just seeds. I
make my own salad—chia, and poppy and
sesame (even though they’re not as healthy).

Shower rarely. Marinate in yourself. (Greasy
skin always has the best flavor.) Eat of it.
Beo (I can call him that) identifies as a super-

human, and I identify as a pseudo-human.
He likes to say black and white are more
alike than any of the grays. (I hate it

when he proselytizes.) He hates it when
he finds out I’ve been practicing to die.
I think he’s jealous. (And, frankly, ill-

prepared.) I’ve come to like bleeding, but
not blood. So when he tries to even the
score—which of course he does—I start

to vomit every time I see, making me
the Duchess of Sorry, stomach of a fly.
This is how we go on: everything I say

is a terrible accident. He is impatient
when I can’t get the lunchbox smell
out of his underwear. We’ve outgrown

each other, but we’re holding on. (That
can happen.) He does something for me
which I cannot find a problem behavior

to replace. Really it’s the same old,
same old. God is the Devil. Grendel
is my brother-in-law. Hating yourself

is selfish. I guess we just can’t win.
So, together, we grow old, too fat
to cross our legs anymore, etc.

Abracadabrian

abracadab-dab dab the sweat or the stick on the
brow or the lips and perform now | pre-formed in
cantations used to be songs, but songs are stu-
died | these you have known from the womb to the
electric chair | before, it was rocks in your pockets,
fires, crosses, a look | all you did was flap your arms,
gold wings, flock together, one big shape, and take
heaven by storm | just for a spell | even the angels,
incensed, wanted to let you have it | you moved on |
just looking for doll bodies, anything that looks like
killing it might | anything that looks like a body | like
living magic | you’re not sorry anymore for knowing
men do not have feelings | they never leave stone-set,
nascent heads | yours, it pulses | courses | blood splays
each droplet its own disease of astonishment | come,
poppet, they coax, and find your teat and pop it | you
quarrelsome little idea of a | could have cured them if
ritual wasn’t wrong | would take skunk, newt, and sage
stirring technique | let it congeal | say the words; they’re
twisted around your intestines | chant-toss them like a
urine cake to the dog, so they might see that you’re a
vessel of power | that you’re not hiding | soup’s a curse
when ladies make it | you’ve been pressurizing powers,
expelling them a little at a time | letting yourself cook |
using all of the same ingredients, noodles | sip yourself
easily | contemplate prowess | and then it disappears |

_________

Kelsey Nuttall is a sad and normal poet pursuing her MFA at the University of Alabama. Before her residence in Tuscaloosa, she lived in Washington, D.C., and around Michigan. She dabbles in papier-mâché-ing haunted dolls and jogging. Her dating profile also says that she listens to bad music.