LINNIE COLE - POEMS

Linnie Cole is a Denver native and currently attends Colorado College. She has been writing poetry for 6 years, and recently began performing her poetry on the school’s spoken word team. Her work is confessional and archival, marked by an intimacy and authenticity she hopes to see more readily in the world at large — regardless of how uncomfortable or difficult it may be. The ability to organize and consolidate the ether of memory and trauma and sensation through words is crucial, and Linnie believes this to be true now more than ever.

​bless me mother

bless me mother, for I have loved
in every corner of this strange and sanctimonious earth
even though i was born with a chest that caves inwards towards a defunct heart with a pin sized hole
still i have kissed the scabbed knees and rubbed the soupy palms and licked the Himalayan tears of the primordial pariah 
and even though I was born with a spine that grew like Joshua Tree, in an eternal state of windblownness, i still fold myself to the ground in order to cup, displace, replace the dirt in some attempt at rectification
an apology in the form of my heavy hum

bless me mother, for i have loved 
long after the day the tissue grew back and the doctors listened with their stethoscopes and nodded their naked heads to say all really is clear on the Western Front
long after they told me to bend over and ran their fingers along the sub rosa snake that wove between my shoulders and said, we want to tether your Joshua Tree to a metal rod so it can grow tall and straight and strong 
and i shuddered and shied and shifted away 
  
bless me mother, for i have loved 
every knoll and mesa and bluff of this stolen land 
i have rubbed up against each hummock and called it baby 
swayed in every hammock until mama called me lazy 
i have plucked and sucked the limoncello liquor from the grass and kept chewing until the fibers flossed my teeth
i’ve washed myself raw in the red rivers, scrubbing your minerals into my porousness until i was soft as the day i was born 

bless me mother, for i loved even when
when baby batter became pickled poison 
and it seemed as if every pan and kama and freya was telling me i am not meant to be this 
lover,
i am not mean to be this 
mother 
maybe, i should’ve paused when instead i loved deeper — 
because you can’t wrap a lamb intestine around your entire body 
and what was the name of the lamb who died so you could at least try? 

so please, bless me mother, for i have loved 
even though i was created in fentanyl fuzz and
daddy tied my tooth to the door and slammed it so hard 
and the lotto machines and humid carpets of that hallucinatory city 
were no company for two midsized babies to share

​even though daddy didn’t remember when i took my first big step 
or said my first big word 
i still loved him with all of my chicken leg bowling ball might
protected his honor with arms windmilling, nails scratching
i put up such a good fight they had to drag me away 
she’s a daddy’s girl, they said
i didn’t see them roll their eyes cause i was looking at you
unconscious and clammy and another nation entirely 
she’s a daddy’s girl, they said

so bless me, mother for i have loved 
in spite of — and because of — all of this
i’ve loved down at little dry creek, and on top of big wet mountain 
loved gravel right into my knees, love straddled when i parted with ease 
loved in the center of fields that left markings on my buttocks like the etchings of pine beetles
which i at one point believed were poems left by dryads
loved my daddy even as he stroked my hair to sleep and i worried that the repetition of his thumb, incessantly, on the same stretch of scalp would form a divot in my head like that
shoulder dimple i loved, and that freckle farm and that tooth gap and that throat clearing
as if all of it was something i caressed and tasted and heard in another life but had forgotten until 
just…right…now

you see, 
my love it’s
carnal 
and equally as clean 
pruning every finger of the hand of the body of the world
i will baptize you in my saliva 
i will make you new again 
this divine slobber is immaculate
and your holy water? it’s ejaculate 
i don’t mean to sound crude but 
what i’m trying to say is this love
is a love immemorial

so please
bless me mother,
because i am learning how to love in a way that doesn’t mean
submission, but rather, intention.
how do i meter a love that expands so far beyond itself?
does it have limits? and am i allowed to touch them?
everyone keeps telling me to reel it in.
and, mother, i don’t know how to do it. 
should i tether it like my Joshua Tree? 

now i’m folding myself to the ground again
digging for the bones of that owl i buried two years ago. 
searching for all of the skeletons of the things i loved too much, 
for that tooth and that corresponding string, 
for the kneecaps and collarbones of those bodies that once merged with mine.

i’m making a cavity in the ground so i can curl up and rest.
the earth will hold me here,
in the den of her belly. 
she does this because i have loved.
she blesses me because i have loved.
here is an apology.

​

lamentation ​

you bought me one of those candles for my birthday that 
slowly reveals something once the wax melts away
and for 6 months i lit it, almost religiously,
july through january, how loyal i was
and how much wax kept coming
the well so deep and so plentiful 

every time you came over you checked it
scoffing or sighing at its lack of progress
“its supposed to come right off," you’d say
“i swear i didn’t just buy you a regular candle”

you were so set on convincing me there was something there
and each time i reassured you 
i know, i know this candle is special
i love that it takes time

and after a while, i stopped expecting it to reveal anything
a resignation, yes, but i liked the consistency
the way it burned and burned but the wax stayed fixed
abundant and unabating and so, so far from a shortage 
so far from epiphany or excitement or anything that wasn’t expected 

so the wax stayed, steadfast and stubborn 
and nothing ever showed
i found it under my fingernails and spilled on the rug
i found it in the corners of my eyes when i woke up
it slid down the walls in slow motion for weeks
webbing between my fingers 
spreading between my legs 

eventually, it worked its way into my mouth  
which laid waiting, open, unhinged
it clotted and coagulated
covering my throat in syrup that makes like fire but feels like milk
except this milk coats and dries
and i can’t fucking breathe
and the wax keeps coming 
and I’m gagging and coughing 
and you push my head down
just 
a bit
more

two days after we broke up
the figures underneath the wax started to show
a pair of silhouettes intertwined 

i’m on my knees already 
so sitting vigil just makes sense
it’s the wake of us,
embalmed in wax
finally receding

​

​Agoraphobia in V-tones

We lived an entire lifetime yesterday, I swear
I felt the birth and death of it,
the rip of flesh and the shifting silence
I felt my hand sink like iron 
through your thigh,
through the nylon upholstery and the metal frame of the car
and slap onto the road 
Shredded meat in the shape of five fingers (gravel imbedded gore)
I felt the space between Westcliffe and Wetmore
I felt it more than I’ve felt any other
It’s width horizontal, peripheral, so wildly stretching around us 

I thought about becoming the telephone lines
I thought about smacking my head on the dash
I thought about becoming a giant and running, heels hard, over the hill
I thought about Orion’s wrapping his Belt around my throat and 
I heard the Seven Sisters try and console me when he did

You see, no amount of peach rings and red bull helped us then
In those elastic moments between desert and tundra
When the wind whipped my face raw
and I sucked on a strand of hair like a tantrum-child on the comedown 

It was because I felt the bright blood of beginning and the blue spruces of lament 
and the racist Bishop boy tried his best to build a castle but 
it was falling apart and 
my foot was slipping and
you just kept fucking 
going

​