Hover

Amy Pence


Trigger warning: graphic depictions of women


the skin of me has no name . nor the arching branches . against a monochrome forest .  nor frogs brimming to the surface .  with a million tones . skin on water collects water skaters .   skaters on water . lobed leaves & toothed .     or unlobed,  untoothed .     less familiar . than the skin of me .  on the news, images of small dwellings . reports that grown men entered  girls found hoveled . {related to hove or hover} . in bent refrigerator boxes under a half-burnt underpass . {to arch, bend, buckle} . under construction shards . forcibly, they enter the girls . one—11— her flesh strafed .  burned by a plastic lighter— . the men toothed, untoothed . entrances . spaces . invasions . most, dark-haired girls . their hair clotted  with semen . or secreted in a van . fingers hover : pixels of a her reflect across faces . their hair covered, uncovered . an eye witnesses a volley {vulgar latin: volta, feminine noun} of creatures .  creatures volley {to fly, see volant} . into the I .  interlocking millions . frogs begin their bilious croaking .  as in want .  want . want .  matter . body .envelops . {envolupen, to be involved in sin, crime} . the girls nameless . entered .  entered again .     dry leaves .  spent shells .     skate across water .   our skin has no name . nor the interlocking branches . with a million tones . the I speaks, blooms . the I wreaks {Olde English: to avenge}. heaves {past tense, hove; to lift, raise, bear up}  its  millions  .


The Death Verses

Amy Pence

    To gallop into the void
    on their wooden upside-down horses, 
the Masters set down
    their last verses:

1) Master Ta-kuan had no
energy to box anyone’s ears:  Yume, he wrote–
Dream, and died.

2) When he wrapped his legs
full lotus, Master
Hofuku left ideation.

3) Chuang-tzu refused the expensive funeral, but
not the carrion kites or the crows. The cricket-moles
did not weep for his flesh.
    
4) Indescribable tenderness.  

5) Bashō had no poem.
​ He had already died 
to every moment, breathing
each brilliant fish to life.

 
 
 

about the writer

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Amy Pence authored the poetry collections Armor, Amour (Ninebark Press), The Decadent Lovely (Main Street Rag), and the chapbooks Skin’s Dark Night (2River Press) and Your Posthumous Dress: Remnants from the Alexander McQueen Collection (dancing girl press). Her hybrid book on Emily Dickinson— [It] Incandescent – (Ninebark, 2018) won the Eyelands Poetry Award in Athens, Greece. A full-time tutor in Atlanta, she’s taught poetry-writing at Emory University and in other workshop settings. Links to other work: www.amypence.com