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
