Two POEMS
AJ Wright
Sour the Rind
What if—and he’s just thinking out loud,
hurling viscera at the wall and reading it
like tea leaves--
pain is a waiting room for hope;
the paper gown a chrysalis,
gold-lipped and holy?
No one ever mentions the way out:
the hereditary unmaking, the body
coming apart at the seams.
*
Even my name hurts sometimes,
concrete like the rest of me,
chain and cinderblock
around my hips.
Somewhere there’s a window
onto a field and the footpath
winding through it;
maybe there’s a gesture
in the underbrush, needy fist
around my finger leading me
into the weeds.
*
The hands of a clock
and noon the most tender.
Pinch up the fat of it;
the seconds are a knot
swelling from the point
of a needle.
*
The house is 101 years old
and full of impish ghosts wading
through the flooded root cellar.
I’ve tried my best: rolled my jeans
to my knees, passed a bucket
blindly into the dark.
They offer the rind instead, sour moon
swimming in vinegar, like sweetness
was never the point.
*
As impersonal as a flash tattoo,
just a sketch pinned to a wall:
6’1” with a marketing degree,
kindergarten headshot laureled
with ringlets pale as straw.
First saxophone in high school
concert band—a muted echo
of my own past life.
Every note hangs
from the same
crooked register.
I will never know the quality
of his embouchure, the shape
of his puckered lips.
As quick as a signature.
I will never ask his name.
*
I remember the snow
the most, plowed into
dirty parking lot heaps.
It’s 5am in Columbus
and I’m allergic
to morphine.
The word is
retrieval
and I feel every
indifferent thrust;
the word is
aspiration
and it’s a follicular lie,
hostage in a cask of fog.
*
The answer is yes
for a few days.
For a few days
I can see it:
wisp of pale light
curled into its own
waning heat.
Liar's Suite
There’s a flash of light
at conception. I know
because the milky god
of hill country
told me so, gave a name
to the almost-bolted,
the germ, the delicate
pulsing floret.
Forget the first gasp,
the guttural howl.
It’s the light
and I’ve seen it.
*
Imagine they hand you a bag
fluorescent enough to be seen
in the curtain-closed dark.
Hope named biohazard;
hope named waste. Imagine
you take it, this catch kit.
Imagine you fill it--
all softness.
This is care, this reminder:
a body made useful.
A body made
snitch.
*
Say it once and it goes nowhere--
a vulnerable thing, unfixed.
The first word doesn’t count.
There is a room for it later,
and a desk, and a hand to
make it still.
After: the waiting. The shape
of it might harden to fact.
Might.
How long the tongue
can keep it,
the version of the story
you’ve molded for legality.
You’ve practiced malleability,
could shape it even in sleep.
Truth like salt dough
in a mixing bowl.
How long it can live
outside the body.
How long.
What if—and he’s just thinking out loud,
hurling viscera at the wall and reading it
like tea leaves--
pain is a waiting room for hope;
the paper gown a chrysalis,
gold-lipped and holy?
No one ever mentions the way out:
the hereditary unmaking, the body
coming apart at the seams.
*
Even my name hurts sometimes,
concrete like the rest of me,
chain and cinderblock
around my hips.
Somewhere there’s a window
onto a field and the footpath
winding through it;
maybe there’s a gesture
in the underbrush, needy fist
around my finger leading me
into the weeds.
*
The hands of a clock
and noon the most tender.
Pinch up the fat of it;
the seconds are a knot
swelling from the point
of a needle.
*
The house is 101 years old
and full of impish ghosts wading
through the flooded root cellar.
I’ve tried my best: rolled my jeans
to my knees, passed a bucket
blindly into the dark.
They offer the rind instead, sour moon
swimming in vinegar, like sweetness
was never the point.
*
As impersonal as a flash tattoo,
just a sketch pinned to a wall:
6’1” with a marketing degree,
kindergarten headshot laureled
with ringlets pale as straw.
First saxophone in high school
concert band—a muted echo
of my own past life.
Every note hangs
from the same
crooked register.
I will never know the quality
of his embouchure, the shape
of his puckered lips.
As quick as a signature.
I will never ask his name.
*
I remember the snow
the most, plowed into
dirty parking lot heaps.
It’s 5am in Columbus
and I’m allergic
to morphine.
The word is
retrieval
and I feel every
indifferent thrust;
the word is
aspiration
and it’s a follicular lie,
hostage in a cask of fog.
*
The answer is yes
for a few days.
For a few days
I can see it:
wisp of pale light
curled into its own
waning heat.
Liar's Suite
There’s a flash of light
at conception. I know
because the milky god
of hill country
told me so, gave a name
to the almost-bolted,
the germ, the delicate
pulsing floret.
Forget the first gasp,
the guttural howl.
It’s the light
and I’ve seen it.
*
Imagine they hand you a bag
fluorescent enough to be seen
in the curtain-closed dark.
Hope named biohazard;
hope named waste. Imagine
you take it, this catch kit.
Imagine you fill it--
all softness.
This is care, this reminder:
a body made useful.
A body made
snitch.
*
Say it once and it goes nowhere--
a vulnerable thing, unfixed.
The first word doesn’t count.
There is a room for it later,
and a desk, and a hand to
make it still.
After: the waiting. The shape
of it might harden to fact.
Might.
How long the tongue
can keep it,
the version of the story
you’ve molded for legality.
You’ve practiced malleability,
could shape it even in sleep.
Truth like salt dough
in a mixing bowl.
How long it can live
outside the body.
How long.
AJ Wright is a poet from Appalachia whose work appears or is forthcoming in SWING, APARTMENT Poetry, Hole in the Head Review, Antiphony Journal, The Garlic Press, Good River Review, Eleventh Hour Literary, and elsewhere. She runs Pictura Journal, and her first collection will be published by Pulley Press in 2026. She currently resides in West Virginia.