BELIEVE IT OR NOT I STARTED TO WORRY

                   by Emilia Phillips

summer’s laid out before me
      flat as a sweat
palm an inland salt sea & still

     I feel hurried
this sense of not-doing
     persuades me

I can do even
     less my to-do
list’s eat, go

     on a walk,
masturbate at least
     once, make

sure to bathe if only
     for your
own damn self the body

     abstracted
from consequence from
     law I try to

smoke weed again
     but remember
why I can’t I can’t

     spend hours
piecing together the world
     through glimpses

through the bedroom
     blinds the
held-breath of sirens in

     the distance
my head like a bell
     submerged with

the ship in a tidal
     pool the tongue
weightless in

     the brass in
the mouth the mouth which
     opens only to

sing for my own
     ear that gir-hir-hirl
like a shook chain

     you’ve got an
ass like I’ve never
     seen the shower
​
pounding the metal
     basin once
we had possums living

     underneath
the house you could
     hear them

scratching below
     the tub the
dog lost his mind trying

     to get to
them his nose shoved
     down

the drain I learned
     to forgive
my own instincts their musk and bared

     teeth for
repetitive injuries the body
     stops sending

relief so a turned ankle
     already
turned won’t swell what about

     my heart my
heart self-sustaining like a male corpse
     flower with its

plenary fishoil slick
     black   
garlic dumpster fire stench

     calls carrion
beetles to bathe in the weightless
     yellow


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photo by Tracy Tanner

Emilia Phillips is the author of two poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, Signaletics (2013) and Groundspeed (2016), and three chapbooks, most recently Beneath the Ice Fish Like Souls Look Alike (Bull City Press, 2015). Her poems and lyric essays appear widely in literary publications including Agni, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She’s an assistant professor in the MFA Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her third book, Empty Clip, will be published by the University of Akron Press Spring 2018.