Two Poems by Kerri Webster

The Dead Teach Me Grounding Techniques

Put a pebble in your shoe.  Slit the deer.  Open the gate to the mountains.
The asphalt has begun to pray. Fill the vitrines with moths. Snap a rubber
band around the wrist. Bite this rind. Strip needles from the pine. Swaddle
the wolf.  Place  your  palm  above  the  flame.  Inside  the  light.  To  not  go.
Swallow  the  squid  whole.  Flagellate.  Open  the  door  to  the  river.  Paint
your  nipples  chartreuse.  Harvest  pollen.  Squint  till  the  headstones  blur.
Step  on  a  lightbulb.  Worry  the  stone.  Rub  in  the  stain.  To remain.  Sing
the Psalm.  Open  the  hatch  to  the  sea.  Scald a thumbnail.  Be  still.  Let the
bee sting. O clap your hands. Gnash incisors. Bury your face in fur. Be not far
from me.

Primrose, Orchid, Datura

To say I lived on honeycomb is not enough. I lived
on milkfat, garnets, whiskey bottles under the bed,
lotion pearlescent on skin. I slept half the day, woke
late, ate ridiculous bouquets, milking austerity
for gorgeousness—blossoms collected in jars, granites
thieved from silt. I napped and architected a decadent
inwardness. I did not know the Christbody would
take up residence in the next room, in a hospice bed,
until the whole house smelled like nightblown
Gethsemane, or that this would go on until the world
ran out of sponges from its acrid seas. Once I was a girl
who wore feathers and ivory, a woman who let the tap
run in the desert past all decency. Forgive me.

Kerri Webster is the author of three books of poetry: The Trailhead (Wesleyan, 2018), Grand & Arsenal (Iowa, 2012), and We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone (Georgia, 2005). She currently teaches in the MFA program at Boise State University.