Palette of Skin and other poems by Alison Heron Hruby

g9b9a8f85d9fb99cdd7066d8d019b3216df93fdbcd86180b2de0cfa3b6cc4f8395bbd51cd3583bee280899610ee1c7eba2f1b3504afd26b19b1f029ef6e94d06d_1280-1128693.jpg

Autodidact for BLACKPINK’s Shut Down dance practice video 

I have been searching for an anatomy 

of backbone, to know how a spine 

coordinates when quietness

and softness are butter

baking inside my house

There are instructions here:

give a body in opposition to its words—

nails, arms, knees 

drawing side-angle-side,

sing 

swerve, sleep.

Imply your unsettled hair is a centrifugal force,

have others retract in its wake—

sing pearls,

pink, and request.

Request is the toughest word,

meaning not needing 

to pay for what your body wears 

when 

it appears

to devour.

Palette of Skin

In a dream our skin is a palette

capable of soft things

we can touch in front of a silver 

elevator reflecting our bodies,

the first and only time you’ll take my hand.

You’ve come to my library to read your poems.

Later I’ll tell 

my daughter

the best way to have someone hold you

is to reach from the ground,

and that I learned this

by imagining love.

Just Folded Under

There were twenty-seven oceans in my life,
each one accounted for until 

I moved to dry land.
And then I moved beside myself
an adult, jelly made firm.
But love was the trick
and the ocean moved inside,

not inside my heart, that
was pulp, and no water
forgives the messy blood within,
trying to find exactly
a pin. The ocean was
blue and soapy white, and the
roar inside my

head was supposed 
to suffice.

In my heart
the ocean resides now, I think 
it might
be twenty-seven, just-folded under.

Alison Heron Hruby is an associate professor of English education at Morehead State University in eastern Kentucky and lives with her husband and two children in Lexington, Kentucky. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Roi Faineant Press, Sleet Magazine, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Alien Buddha Press, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @aheronhruby and Instagram @alliehope68

Scroll to Top