The Poetry Marathon

Anomia

interactions with endless limits

of what this body chooses to remember

the definition of limerence

twitches in my left hemisphere

only to become sedimentary

a fossil I cannot interpret

digging itself underground

and I, amateur archaeologist I am,

fumble the excavation

break the relic in two. 

I open my mouth and I, too, solidify,

I weep and my tongue becomes a mountain

I speak and it erupts

only in words

I’ll regurgitate later

this body was a person once

with uninterrupted skin

and lungs ballooning with ambition

it even knew its own name

this body isn’t much for purity culture

but perhaps it was the hands that touched it

that took away the self, the animation

or perhaps it was the slow decay of mourning

or the woodgrain patterns of trauma

all building upon each other

to make this body a tree

but this body was a person once

this body was a person once

my body was a person once

Hi folks!

I procrastinated doing this a bit, but hello! My name is Alex Aimee Kist and I am currently writing from Salem, MA. I am the Managing Editor of Ginger Bug Press and the Development Committee Leader of the Boston Poetry Slam. I am also the founder of Northshore Writers, a group of folks on the MA Northshore that get together once a month to join a creative space, write, and receive feedback. You can find my work in Beyond Queer Words, The Closed Eye Open, Quartz Literary, and the 2021 Poetry Marathon Anthology.

This is my second official poetry marathon and I am so excited to go on this journey with you all. I have found that this exercise really helps me stretch my craft. I can’t wait to get all these poems polished up, but for now let’s get a little chaotic together.

xo Alex

I tell a friend that a good poem

makes anger rumble 

through the soft of my belly

and she laughs.

Asks why such beauty

warrants that response. 

When bed and body 

were smaller,

my home 

was always filled of sound.

Cacophony had only two causes

laughter or anger. 

And I’m uncertain

a rabbit blinking 

unsure when to bound away.

Do not think me angry

when perhaps it is only madness.

Laughter and anger,

a split hair

regurgitated up the throat

a string with opposing symphonies

uncertainty of which notes 

will play when struck.

And suddenly I am Alice

following a rabbit who is also me

as it runs rather than be perceived.

I am not confident enough 

in my own thoughts

to trust you’ll hear them

gently. 

But is it not these emotions

that opened my doorway,

that I heard through a crack

sneaking to hear what the family 

coughed from their lungs.

And I am 

laughing cackling howling

but the caterpillar 

hands me a poem

There is nothing funny

about the thought

that those hands 

that mind

crafted something so complete. 

Is it not these emotions

that taught me expression

could be beautiful?

That shattered my chest

to scoop the years 

of composting feelings

from between my intestines.

So when the poem does not warrant laughter

yet loudness is called for

can you blame me for the raging in my eyes?

“This is how she found us/ the past draped about us like a cloak” –Diana Khoi Nguyen

When history had not been made yet,

when the outcome was nothing but a thought,

a raindrop of potential,

not even a probability, but a possibility still.

Then. 

When history had not been made yet. 

I wonder if the men whose hands 

had not yet pressed the buttons

trembled.

It should have been everything to do 

with anticipation–

not of glory

but of cells mutations

of Native land taken

of fear like a cloak over the world.

Part Two: The Only Time I’m Home is With Your Hands On My Hips, Descending

I typically live at the centerfold of misery, 

some semblance of my mind stapling the pages of my body 

to the rest of these articles of dissociation. 

Yet, at your touch, this body is a home again

for every portion of me that quakes and thunders,

withdrawing all reason to run from the sound. 

Your fingers trace bone, nails trailing with brutal beauty 

simply a moment in their wake and the tension 

brings my skeleton once more to tremble 

at the altar of your home, too. This palace of flesh 

both parallel and perpendicular to mine as we collide. 

Darling, my darling, what happens when our houses 

are one? When they are transferred through 

the rhythm that you beat into my thighs? 

Will I still know my own? Or is your touch the only key

to the threshold of this being? No matter. I beckon you. 

Open.

Why Mozzarella

It started with cheese sticks on a Saturday morning

reached on tip-toe from the right-side drawer of the refrigerator. 

Peeled plastic independence on the way to see 

Ariel fall in love just one more time. 

Then onto slices with tomatoes

roasted with olive oil dripping over capers

for lunches with my mother. 

Let us indulge, she says, every time she takes a bite. 

And cheese sticks, again, on a Saturday morning,

or rather a Friday night that didn’t end. Biting through

and not pulling. Too tipsy to wish for webbing

wrapping around my tongue. 

Next onto pizza made with homemade everything

a promise he made to feed and cherish the work

we have done. Our attempt to do better, to fulfil

the tasks we laid before us. 

No, back to cheese sticks. Pulling at the strings to find what even might be joy. 

The Only Time My Mind Goes Blank is With Your Hands On My Hips, Descending

There is a moment before your mouth descends,

the pulse of breath against tender flesh, 

when my body craves for you to mold your name into my skin

to scrape teeth and tongue and engrave initials

like sweethearts do in bark. Mark me. 

Turn my porcelain to raspberries, and raspberries to blue. 

Make me yours. With that laugh scoffed into my center

as my chest quickens, back crescented against the blue sheets. 

Turn me into the moon. Imprinted with a man’s face, 

your face. Make me see stars and echo their calling. 

Can you hear them? Can you hear the night sing to us?

Darling, don’t you know my rupture is the only thing

that can make that go away? So, go a little slower, 

make it last a little longer, before I break.

Before you pull back all the pieces to make me whole.

Ode to Caffeinated Moonlight

Jittering hands and

remarkably open eyes

neverending night

cursed inspiration

flowing through my bitter veins

to guide me forward

If My Body Were a Game of Operation

Racing Thoughts – Remove the race car from my mind and give a motherfucker a rest

Too-Small Skull – Try and grasp the bone and force it through a passage that is designed for you to fail

Fawn Response Throat – Please, take it. I’d rather fight anyways

Broken Humerous – Remove the hilarity I built when I was eight

Backbone – You can’t have it. I grew it myself. 

Perfect Cervix – According to my gynecologist. It’s only weird if you want it to be. 

Dumptruck Ass – Grab a hold. Throw it back. 

Eject Button Knees – Give up whenever you want to, my knees do. 

Snap, Crackle, and Pop Ankles – Take away the cereal so I don’t have to hear it anymore.

Pointed Toes – Sometimes curled, thats more fun. 

Play along and build dexterity, all you have to do is take me apart and put me back together again.