Hole

Here, you said, is the hole in me. It is called Loneliness. It is here, beneath my left ribs. And you moved my hand to probe it. I said, I would like to make my home there. Will Loneliness leave you if it is filled with my body? No, you said, the hole is not a bedroom. The hole is not a swimming pool. The hole is bigger than your body, even if it is sitting here, fist-sized, in mine. If you live in it, you will drown in it. If you try to fill it, you will be surrounded by it. Beloved, I said, but can it be filled with my love, wide as the sea, expanding like the clouds? No, you replied. Only with love of my own.

Collected Twitter Poems

Oh! Beloved,
you have made of me
a watering can,

And what can grow
out of this shielded Eden
But murky fruits,
too pivotal to handle?

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) October 21, 2016

2 matches, 3 matches, 4
hot plumes rise like 1, packed light,
lay down darkribbed

I unpack and unpack;
ravel a sock, unfold a map
sit, sigh

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) October 13, 2016

still I swing between god and not-god;
god admits he is pushing the swing

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) October 3, 2016

Time teaches me
to filter air
to swallow stones
to serve tears to guests

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) September 19, 2016

the cure: I open my fists,
press palms to thighs/elbows/cheeks,
and say:
"you are not in limbo!
you are alive all over!
you are right here!"

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) September 17, 2016

2
bleeds bleeds bleeds bleeds bleeds
whose is this body?!
does it love me or love you?
no, it reminds whining
i loved the baby you have lost

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) September 16, 2016

2. At some point I learned
Not to sing when I am crying
Not to cry when I am bleeding
Not to bleed when I am cut!
But yes, I cower when bent

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) September 15, 2016

Someday I'll say, wait,
that's me, I'm made of belief,
I'm a world washing over with love after grief,
Peacemaker/keeper forgiveness machine

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) August 29, 2016

Be not afraid of a sour heart.
When you come to me,
Be loved, beloved,
And say to your lemoned center:
Sweeten up, bitter fist—
This is mine

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) August 15, 2016

Amen, amen
Guitar on stomach, wheeze balloon whistles out of throat-
Darkpine branches, strain at window-
And press in, indigo summer,
amen.

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) June 21, 2016

Back at home,
I get to sigh the sigh made of
plasticskinned
dusteyed
waxtoothed
woolhaired
paperscalped
sandfaced
metalsternumbed
chest pain

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) June 9, 2016

Pinball brain:
wake up! where are you?
Of all beds we have slept in, all the white-morning windows,
And who is that coming through the door?

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) May 24, 2016

Some sad is inescapable!
Settle in, dissolving salteye,
But know this:
All my other faces pay rent.

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) May 23, 2016

It is hard to be:
Alive or yours
Or dead or alone
Or kind or good
Or mean or selfish
To be five or twenty
And all these multiply each other

— Emily Brown (@emilybrownmusic) May 22, 2016

In this house of skin even the furniture shines with heat
Like salamanders, burning bushes, like the phoenix,
I am consumed and regurgitated by the mouth of fire.

Wasp

Your convoluted paper house

made of fragile tunnels, a network of flowers,

hive of papery straw wrappers, sunbleached like dead coral,

and you built that house pressed into the top corner

of the outcropped roof, above the pool,

reappearing every May or June

just as I was racing my brother

to tag the drain first this summer

We filled with terror

when you came flying in,

spinning in the air and playing your violin,

neon yellow and black and raging in the sky,

my head sucked under the water with a mouthful of air--

And was this the moment my youngest brother realized

if he exhaled before sinking,

he felt inexplicably calm

about staying underwater for good?

Cake

1. Combine the dry ingredients first because something about how if this cement touches water too soon, it will become not a corrugated tower but a terse brick.
2. Combine the wet ingredients (but not the eggs) with the sugar because the sugar dissolves into the butter when you beat them together, it turns glossy yellow, divining down from the whisk, pale yellow silk.
3. Beat the egg whites separately because they expand slowly into aerated styrofoamish clouds, pearl sheen when they stiffen, the whisk twists and gathers them into soft towers, mountains and valleys topped with soft, slick fog.
4. Fold them into the batter because of the satisfying "thump" they breathe when you drop them on the buttery surface, because of the variegated stripes that form as the spatula gondolas in circles around the mixing bowl's edge.
5. Split this batter into three pans because a three-layer cake is a tower, a fortress of floors and floors made for kings.
6. Put them in the oven because these floors will construct themselves with invisible hands, balloon-blowing yeast inflating into a thousand tiny rooms.
7. Pour simple syrup over these layers because it perfumes these rooms with shining gloss, fills them with silk and morning.
8. Frost it because now it is only crumbling drywall, because a palace like this needs smooth white plaster, that soft sweet safe membrane from the heat, from the rain.