MatthewJunkin

I learned a new trick today!

But I can’t remember what it was. It had something to do with holding the inside in, Or stopping the outside from being inside.
I don’t know—maybe it had to do with stacking
Items on top of one another in a memory palace.
Mug is on the table, table is near the counter,
Coffee pot is on the counter… I need to buy
Cream. That’s not it; it had something to do with the symbol of the cream—
The cow, the farm—no, the farmer, and how frightened he was when he looked up
And saw the sky open. He’d never seen the sky look back at him before.

Or was it the horse, not the cow? Something to do with keeping
The inside of the horse inside the horse, and not outside.
But upon further inspection of the horse (which the farmer believed
To have been a horse, of course), he could see more arms than a horse
Has. In fact, the horse was two men under a blanket, horsing around.
And now that the symbol was all broken and all over the floor, and what was inside was out, the horse’s insides were
Running this way and that, both halves yelling, “Look, look at the sky—she’s smiling!”
But the sky wasn’t smiling at all, was she? And the horse wasn’t a horse in the first place, and there wasn’t a cow—just an empty jar of cream and cold black coffee.

Questing

I hope you have enough
milk for the journey
along long lines of
silver fields crashing in on
your siblings’ broken bones.
See them change before you like
the mountains get reduced to
gravel.

I hope you have enough
milk for the journey,
enough flour, enough butter,
enough fire to eat when your
three houses feel empty,
enough bread in your belly.

I hope you have enough
milk for the journey
that starts when your
mother runs dry because
you’ve been so thirsty.
I hope you hold her above
the strangers who have
barely given you water.

I hope you have enough milk
for the journey
so when you sit, weary from walking,
you can set out a saucer for the dogs.