the passion/hands

I find it hard to believe I am going to die;
an animal in an accident rich environment:
a priori foundation, a limited
foundation.

I idolize the word: air, the glide of the shearwater.
I have a tendency to surpass myself;
the passion of life is creatively
outdoing it. I am
hulled (the spirit)—the hull is split;
the center ceases in perfervid
reception.
Oh,

I am not an oarsman, but I have a memory for contests:
to follow, to let pass;
I was only ever thinking about you,
you know.

But care is soft
and punishable:

Doctor,
poet, angel, plaster, steel
caldera, fallen
verdure, heritage and shelter,
the silence of the sun...

I level in recursive return.
You only showed me love

/What I love: the hands,
pointing toward the mouth.

I was accidentally touched,
ingested. Joy burst out—
and I fell clattering into this small category of hope.

What I love: the living.

Too late: how we are human now
is your human invention, a withdraw from an internal animal,

our right to ‘no.’

The leaky things that simper
just inside discrete sensation, revelation and slow
agitation,
come out steadily from under the door. I wallow in them, red to the ankle, caught in the year.

Originally published in Bat City Review Issue 16

Louise Akers is a poet living in Queens, NY. They earned their MFA from Brown University in May of 2018, and received the Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop Prize for Innovative Writing in 2017 and the Confrontation Poetry Prize in 2019.Their poems have been published in MIDTERM, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Fugue Magazine, bæst journal, and elsewhere.