Poem Going Rogue

Cynthia Atkins
| poetry

 

Because the mind wants to be not on time
for once, off the books, unaccounted for, yearns

for a soft landing from a precarious interior cliff. The mind
wants to infringe on unchartered turf, when the microchips

fall where they mast. Upend these sails to loom large over the moon
and ride roughshod over an intuition of landscapes. The heart

wants to tie its shoes with a shorter lace, sit at the kitchen
table, curate on the grid of love and longing. The mind lives

on a hunch, wants to kick the earth to subconscious. Needs to
rearrange the furniture, scream bloody murder in a library

of hushes. The heart keeps mothballs in closets
of clothes that hold our souls. Fact-checked,

the inchoate mind turns off the news, unrhymes
the inexhaustible origin stories of life. Of course, the heart

is its own harshest critic, wears chocolate armor on its sleeves.
The mind knows there are no prayers for bad generals & bounty hunters.

The heart renders a loss so deep, that grief builds a house
of tears. After closing down the requisite bars, the mind

always stumbles home to make angels
in the snow, and let the heart melt them.

Cynthia Atkins (she/her), originally from Chicago, IL, is the author of Psyche’s Weathers, In the Event of Full Disclosure, and Still-Life With God (Saint Julian Press 2020), and Duets, a collaborative chapbook from Harbor Editions. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Alaska Quarterly ReviewBOMBCider Press ReviewDiode, Cimarron ReviewGargoyle, Indianapolis ReviewLily Poetry ReviewLos Angeles ReviewRust + MothNorth American Review, Permafrost, PlumeTinderbox, and Verse Daily.

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