Likenesses
by Orion Allen
Woke up hopeful there’s no semblance between Market Street and my arms, and my arms.
Found a bird, she’s cached singing. Gave the butcher a color: blue. Then asked him gently
to reconstitute. Its gradient. One day so much of you. Then all dressing. Where what’s read
says nothing about constituency. In the sky a pink chute. Woke up hungry, grateful
for a means. Marched down Market, hands in my pockets. To what am I party
besides slinging my body. Into the grass. Out of view. If I must count my victories I spent 20
minutes here explicitly. Then I retreated as into habits, my habits. As if dipping my fingers
into a petrifying stream, leaving them crusted with stone. I trusted dirt to hold what I buried
and beyond that my body. From above my bird found me on my back pink and slayed.
Bird envelop me. Just envelop me. If there’s a spiderweb on my chest it’s because of the spider
compulsive in its task. Of beheading ask the butcher. Where is Alessandra and may I mourn
her when you’re done. May I count her likenesses: Like a fat pink fish: Like a standing coffin:
Like night as I know her full of birds. I am so grateful for the podium for men and their breath
I become one. So called. To be flagged or discerning. Like manning a ship or like manning.
Dave
by Orion Allen
Too many afternoons in an alley that rends
my sight useless
It’s not my call
whether the dark drew and whether it spilled
it definitely wasn’t
I woke
laughing again
thinking of the live pheasant in the landfill
picking through geotic objects
I knew you before I knew you
(Dave tells the empty bar)
(A housecat for a second)
I knew your essence
`Didn’t take communion today
cause I lacked inner quiet
Sat with a pounding
Naked little spool
Spent the day in this rathole for fuck’s
sake oh goody me
The poet’s working
She’s not the ladiest
rubbing at her eyes
Movement Again
by Orion Allen
dreamt of a woman angrier than I
have ever been, rain-dressed—can’t just
leave her eyes, the conversation,
the must, the movement
of this woman, her fury—dream
drenched in fury. She says It’s not a question
of the animal. Violence is contagious and pervasive
and intelligent
and I thought of some perversities which remain
perverse no matter
the context. I carry it all day, exhausted
of fury, into memory, promiseless, hard,
into childhood, at the supermarket buying
seashells, gray sand, California grass
if I could. That night
I transform as I chew on
on this lesson, grow legs no one could
torment and toss my head and smell
like hot horses. What a gift, said the woman,
to think of rational beings as rational actors but in this formulation
something happens
to excuses. I wonder
about an outfit
I could fashion, something
like a border, a cornice, perhaps
inherited. Can they take it, my cornice,
now from and within, where before
I could fit, could press my borderless, clean, no water, no
movement? Will it shield me from the men
of this world, even our men?
About the author
Orion Allen is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. They are also a bartender, immigration paralegal, translator, and stepfather to their roommate's cat, Kiara. Their poems are featured or forthcoming with The Spectacle, Volume Poetry (under the name Peeks Orion), Small Orange, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. Their Instagram is @angel_at_worst.