WOUND/REWOUND | EMILIE KNEIFEL
it’s just the beginning says his barber
as his exhale backsurges
as stickyknots thread their way
into his scalp
as he blinks into sun
that disappears like a mood
mouth like leaves again,
rearing up in the wind again
as he breathes frantic breaths
like the light between shadows, desperate
to stay on the ground
as his mother says
it’s just the beginning
as she hangs the tomato
as trampled bells pull at the street
as he folds
cranes into flatness, dresses
a stranger as he, in bed, unmoving [so much looks the same in reverse -- inhales become exhales and so on], as the thaw clambers up, bends the trees, then the sky, as they textbye, bye- bye, like eyelids resisting their sleep
as he kisses him, knotted mouth pulling
[pulling, the way people talk about gulps]
as the dryer dumps water onto his clothes,
as he backcrawls to bed, lies
terrified. a body
(a mother’s vomit, knees on the tile)
as his blood thickens to a normal viscosity, the bruises under his eyes loosen up, as a new body fits into his in a plagiarism, as he can’t - as he falls -
as he lets baseball lights prism his arm, no forward, no back, he forgets
as he drives twelve hours straight
just to feel his hands leaving him,
delicate rough,
autumn leaves, autumn cool
as he thinks i want to forget
with you, let me forget with you,
as he forgets,
as he backruns alone,
singscreams diving into him
from the top
of the trees, as backpuddles rip
ple to stillness, as his forest hair darkens
to green
[something shifts every time this replays] [the hair is /behind/ the ear, the mouth doesn’t /open/]
[people love to tell you this] [what about all of what doesn’t]
once, for a day, they idle symmetrically, idyll symmetrically, only word bub, anagram sound, only meal cereal, milk updribbling their chins in his bed. as their eyes pull it taut. as their eyes pull it taut. as the spit still returns to their mouths, as they turn away from each other in sleep, as the day leaves their bodies in either direction
hE CAN’T / REMEMBER THIS IS / A TAMPERING EVERYTHING / OXIDIZES , THE WOUND
REWOUND RIPENS TO / GREEN
as the pattering rants
as he sleeps in his bed,
chest pushing deep,
as the pattering
rants, still,
still, for the first (fist pulls
a wall smooth, a child backwhittles green onto) time,
as clouds pull apart like fresh bread
as their built life wavers
like a sheet fort
as he backwhispers into the pearl of his sleep, lipswishing like magnolia leaves, his bottom teeth trilling as his fingernail pulls, this-settingsunengulfing-gulping- til it’s too wild again, a reversed swell deflates, he forgets, he forgets, as they backwalk, pulling kiss after mm iss, as their heavy brains lift, as they pass a woman fading into the faded day [the first time, she walked backwards, and they thought they were dreaming, but she walks straight through this, their reversal, the ends of her hair blunt with the knowing],as they scramble in bed, toes interlocked, mouthing their gibberish, which backwards becomes clusters of many-claused sentences, secrets expanding, you know the earth literally breathes he says as he literally breathes, as it shrinks in reverse, shrivels into twolips that vanish, as he presses the glass, as he keeps his socks on, as he says there you are as if he’s been looking, coolaugh dangling its legs at his throat, parting, departing, as he spots his fin nose, as he fumbles the door, as the boy with sunlight for hair says isn’t it nice to feel the sun on your face, smudged out and fizzling, which wound, rewound, sounds like a bell, as his own blinks undo themselves, as the sun flares, as the rain, as if it heard his ankles toll forth, backforth, stops, as it begins, it never stops, it never stops
Emilie Kneifel is a sick slick, poet/critic, editor at The Puritan/Theta Wave, creator of CATCH/PLAYD8s, heartworms/blueberries, and also a list. find 'em at emiliekneifel.com, @emiliekneifel, and in Tiohtiá:ke, hopping and hoping.
Cover art by Shane Allison.
