By Lilla Carroll, Mount Holyoke College
Turn both hands over and up to the sky,
I’ll speak my life right into your palms:
storyteller fountain spitter, I am full
of stale youth, but I am all I can describe
with confidence. On the way from Virginia to Boston
I let Jimi Hendrix piss right into my hands &
I called it Godless Enlightenment: If given the chance
I will uncork my throat long enough to tell you
everything I know about who I have been
all these years. I think I’m bad at worship
because I do not understand submission &
the act of giving myself up to silent faces:
The thing is, life stories are not enough.
I need to know how the cold air feels
against the back of your throat, I need to know
how every person I’ve ever loved has inhabited
their body. Where do you hold weight in your feet?
It could never be enough
