Amy Jo Trier-Walker: Red Means Healing

Biel Morro

We came down like felled light

We fill our kitchens with burned
waves on the slip-down
to become welcome    without hurting ourselves
suicide-wind-swinging                                  jump on
                                                      our names too full                    

                                            but in this        ourselves   watching        us outside
                                                                from the cabinets

I smile                                a childhood     into being

Do not use the green wall—last night walked in me and I  did not know I existed

So I threw the river for the spirit of the street. Where you drew an animal

out of your eyes—you remain on the bench. Leaves rose

the city theme       a pigeon where I  wouldn’t wouldn’t kiss you remember anythibut I did anyways.

we were then swinging on on our way home                                                    fed them some donuts swing set trying to synchronize

let me show you      how to be little baby     in the river        where scarecrows to float too.

                                                       to                           rush in the way of these child

                                                                               plans to flood tomorrow
                                 I mean—

                                                             not        here           hold

(a chicken gets nervous all by yourself back there so far away from the house

               she swallowed cactus.  Yes.  If you cut down a tree, its roots grow stranger.      haunted, they say,  no one and looked. It tells the ground into stopping  sifting for                      into dusk          
                                                         and feet  remedies are Others are sirening. 
Everyone burns.

                                   uneven healing                           rolling  spun throat
                                                                               and sore river

                                      heard the care         bitter for a wet moth
                                                            still flying
                                                                              all six eyes       red        means healing
                                                and rack

                                            what pears mean in silver
                                                                       hidden seams

                                                                  and she’ll take it into her, now won’t she

Editor's Note: These poems originally appeared on our old site.

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Amy Jo Trier-Walker is a tree and herb farmer in Indiana and the author of Trembling Ourselves into Trees (Horse Less Press 2015).  Recent work can also be found in Forklift, Ohio, Handsome, Ghost Ocean, Word For/Word, and inter|rupture, among others, and she is the Poetry and Art Editor at Black Tongue Review.