Poetry / Grace Gardiner

:: Sentence Diagramming: One-Night Stand ::

 
You tell me about eyes 
                                          my monstrous blue
          I want 
hurting 
                    to look away & toward 
                                                     carpeted floor
                                                toward twinbed blooming under
                                                                                         the lights’ 
                                                            spindle-shaped bulbs
                                                                                              under
                                                                                      the circling
                                                             purr & fizz of the fan
                                                                                              under
                                                                                      your hands
O
your hands darling
          hands
                     stripping off this bed
                                           before us 
                                                 throw comforter topsheet
                     stripping off those clothes
                                                 mauve suit pants
                                                 buttons peppered down rayon
                                                 undertank striped white-hyacinth
                                                                          & vein-blue  

                                                 briefs shimmering
                                                      green-then-black
                                          off you
Your hands 
                     help me
                     strip me too
                                           out of shift cami spandex
                                           out of even my ankle socks
                                                                       petal-thin
                    my body hurting still inside
                                                 the ropes
                                         of its skin
                    my mind
                         threaded
                                      with you
                          Will 
you stop
            ever      Will 
you start 
            Here
       Touch your tongue to me
                                           at the throat’s caving
                                                 notch
       Crush
       Fuse

       Fill me

            in the pit 
                          where
you learn 
       then lift 
 

:: Sentence Diagramming: Watching You Smoke ::

 
                                                                      The porch door’s windowed glass bites back against the light
                                                                                                                               the afternoon
                                                                                                          the yard chartreuse
                                                                                                                 with sun: 
                                                                      so I can see you through
                                                                                     the green- 
                                                                                 then yellow-bending blue
                                                                                                   though I know
                                                                                                                 you won’t see me
                                                                                                                         don’t see how
                                                                              I lock open my eyes
                                                                                                   my lungs
as you draw between pointer finger 
                                       & thumb
                                                                            the cocked cigarette
& blow out a thin cylinder of smoke
                                down-colored cone of breath 
                                                                              ash 
                         like a reverse gasp
                                          through the small spooned curve
                                                                 at your bottom lip. 
                                                                                                    Your mouth Os a damp ring
                                                                                               I’d like to slip 
                                                                 on each puckered part
                                                                                     (finger 
                                                                                     nipple
                                                                                     tongue)  
          of this body’s concentrated hum
                                its oxygen-rich
                                           in-&-out 
                                                            filter of blood
my own hot
                taut
                         font. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

In her poem “Poet­ic Sub­jects,” Rebec­ca Lin­den­berg writes: “Some­where between the sayable and the unsayable, poet­ry runs. Anti­dote to the riv­er of for­get­ting.” Ever since encoun­ter­ing these lines, they have become both a mantra and an affir­ma­tion of my own poet­ic prac­tice.  

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion with a dear friend and poet, I said that, while I may be “some­where between” an extro­vert and intro­vert, I tend always towards exter­nal­iza­tion: I am an exter­nal­iz­er, and poet­ry is the mech­a­nism by which I exter­nal­ize and plumb what is “sayable” and “unsayable.” Stressed, play­ful, and shift­ing syn­tax that is hinged to and unhinges the line is my num­ber one craft tool of choice to (un)lock what I can and can­not com­mu­ni­cate about: sex and grief, trau­ma and desire, pain and ecsta­sy.  

In these poems inves­ti­gat­ing the pris­mat­ic threshold(s) of sex and desire, syn­tax, cou­pled with both sound- and word­play, is the divin­ing rod I thrust over the body to seek out what is buried and bur­bling beneath: what can and cannot—what will or will not—rise to the poem’s surface. 

Grace Gar­diner is a British-Amer­i­can non-bina­ry poet and bur­geon­ing inter­me­dia instal­la­tion artist. They’re cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a PhD in Cre­ative Writ­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri, Colum­bia, where they live with their part­ner, the poet Eric Mor­ris-Pusey; their eel hound, Gem­ma Ray; and one too many brown reclus­es. Find them online at pearlsthatwere.tumblr.com.