Anemones are Just Pickled Tumbleweeds - Isaiah Bunevitsky
poem read by Allison Riechman-Bennett
Anemones are Just
Pickled Tumbleweeds
Isaiah Bunevitsky
Sudden burst asphyxiation
Kelpic tangles blurring face
Warm, credulous, brackish panic
Lubricating our embrace
Displaced doxies seek salvation
Surface heaven in the dark
Mulling weight under glass halos
Buoyancy a question mark
Our day rose a malice emerald
Orange ash among the trout
Texas turned into a river
Amarillo sweated out
We submerged, clasping each other
God drafting our soft demise
Treading old ground, cheating groupies
Waterboarding as He cries
Care-eased thrashing in the fallout
Conserved lungfuls growing weak
Intuition yielding merely
Passing liquid ‘tween our cheeks
Futile as the cattle ranchers
Shifting pailfuls elbow distance
Muscles cramping out of spite
Splashing louder with insistence
I, instead, have played the realist
Worked within, not to restore
The fields, your humor, and my g-string
Dry as bone the night before
Soon, my biceps thin and tire
Reaching across and above
Think of your undying trust
Think of myself as I shove
I desert your “can-do” spirit
Leveraging your tressy wreath
Hauling mass and kicking upward
Scraping toes against your teeth
Grieving mortal paradises
Wilting grazes gaping sore
Your big-hearted ballast body
Costing less than one breath more
Fury bubbles out my nostrils
Watching faith warp you inside
You succumb to pruning cacti
Letting both your spines collide
If the world was built sans corner
If they called this flood a bluff
I’d consider twinning lead
If desire was enough
But survival outweighs kindness
I’d hoist buckets, look for land
You’d eschew this devil’s bargain
Let our lives blanch hand in hand
Fingertips break past horizon
Pushing off your soaking crown
I will not martyr us both
To gain bragging rights and drown
You misread my steeling eyes
Saw false echoes when yours said
You would rather kiss each other
Than kiss shorelap overhead
Isaiah Bunevitsky is an artist, educator, writer, and Native New Yorker.
