if the poem is a mouth

the townspeople name the mouth delusion

i.
who raised you?
stumbling into the meat of the
afternoon downhill uphill

kettle left howling on the stove
that mouth running into evening
with a sciomancing tongue

ii.
if the poem is a mouth the
kettle a burning bright apricot
held softfirm like syllables

which is to say there’s something
ripe and howling in my mouth

iii.
somewhere/someone/follows
the rules          no questions asked

iv.
the bathtub filling up with milk
somewhere a shipwreck
all honey-roses-styrofoam

7000 plastic ducks
traveling into the high arctic

i try to remember which pill on which day
every day seven+ cargo ships sink

v.
somewhere/someone/shuts/up

vi.
here i am/glistening/in this plastic fleet

old-growth vines ensnake the tub
little limbs i soak in balmy time
i sugar scrub the dead things
such that shedding is no litany

sugared no softer doing what you say
and you didn’t have to say it out loud

vii.
the you is imagined
though the mouth could be
yours the poem is not owned
it runs uphill downhill not
away from us but toward

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Patrycja Humienik is a Polish-American writer and performance artist based in Seattle, WA. Her poetry is featured/forthcoming in Passages North, Yemassee, The Shallow Ends, Hobart, and No Tender Fences: An Online Anthology of Immigrant & First-Gen Poetry. She has performed at events including Titwrench Festival, Film on the Rocks at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and REDCAT New Original Works Festival. Find her on Twitter @jej_sen