Two poems by Alexus Erin

And So

I missed autumn: it ran past me. The leaves and feathers,
elms and erins
built themselves an island coastline
of useless request:
asking the people we love to account
for their violence. I was worried
about the white sheets on the bed, the beach,
the overlapping Margaret Atwood poems, cut each from their mother verse:
             “trees”
                         “shouting”
                                     “children shooting guns”
                                                                           “clean water”.

There was dough rising in the gibbous light,
olive pits we left on the table, striped stupid
by their own tiny invasions. I was worried about
all the bread, all the oil they were asking us to eat.
Us, finally; I’m glad I said it. This is something
we made up together- not as intimate
as I previously thought
It speared last June
chaotic, pissing the carpet
between the first and sixth of the month. I was worried, then,
about museums

exhibits of round, pink Plexiglas, bulbous,
hanging, suspended. Of deliverance songs that sounded
suspiciously like the newspaper headline:
             killer cop
                          going free

On Appetite

I said I would never be hungry again. I meant it as a threat
Now I think about threats: winter’s resolute echo,

cold and loud as any move against rest. I ate alone, in stillness.
Only breakfast food. When I was in love, I wrote solely about bread

I didn’t realize I was doing this. Every poem was a ball of dough,
made to be proofed, ovened and torn by companioned hands-

this very motion: a retreat, in order to return and be filled
What a good contradiction this is. I haven’t eaten yet today;

I said grace, regardless. This how most of my poems go
I am excited to bake, and break bread with you again.

My threats are as such: I am willing to be left half-done, to go unfed
The growl isn’t coming from my stomach. It is coming from my mouth.