i draft toward—

after “Dear Kasama,” by Jason Magabo Perez

i draft, comrade, against the risk that we become complacent / i draft toward sweaty bodies and clean water / i draft from my kitchen sink well water jugs / i draft toward a sleeping dragon and awake, hearty soup / i draft, comrade, to make sense of the muddle of our family / such a downward slope of complication / such an upward hill of breathlessness and onion-skin dyed eggshells / i draft to tell myself life is water, and expectations are cinderblocks / i draft behind my steering wheel, driving toward you, comrade / or driving away from you like an exhale / taking lyrics from alabama and florida girls who don’t stay put / to make sense of how i can’t, either / but i keep coming back to my roots / because i can’t uproot / i draft to answer this question / i think maybe i’m closer to an answer / and then will ask a question of that answer / dear comrade, dearest brother or the closest i’ll have by blood / i draft like i could pray, in another life, for your safety in the fires / for the world’s safety in the ravaging / dear comrade, dearest brother or the closest i’ll have by word and by distance / i draft like i could accept death’s inevitability like you do / to honor the burials of chickens and rabbits / dear comrade, dearest sister or the closest i’ll have by blood / i draft from what you’ve taught me about the borderlessness of the desert / the borderlessness of dykehood or the soil of your as-yet unplanted garden in the woods, because you let it be mine too / dear comrade, dearest cowboy tethered to this hand-state like me, i draft from a reality, an always-already then and there where poems can be themselves, and we can be poems, nothing else, existence and nothing more, a future with nothing to save.

Issue 7

https://manyworlds.place/issue-7/andrea-lianne-grabowski/

by andrea lianne grabowski

after “Dear Kasama,” by Jason Magabo Perez

i draft, comrade, against the risk that we become complacent / i draft toward sweaty bodies and clean water / i draft from my kitchen sink well water jugs / i draft toward a sleeping dragon and awake, hearty soup / i draft, comrade, to make sense of the muddle of our family / such a downward slope of complication / such an upward hill of breathlessness and onion-skin dyed eggshells / i draft to tell myself life is water, and expectations are cinderblocks / i draft behind my steering wheel, driving toward you, comrade / or driving away from you like an exhale / taking lyrics from alabama and florida girls who don’t stay put / to make sense of how i can’t, either / but i keep coming back to my roots / because i can’t uproot / i draft to answer this question / i think maybe i’m closer to an answer / and then will ask a question of that answer / dear comrade, dearest brother or the closest i’ll have by blood / i draft like i could pray, in another life, for your safety in the fires / for the world’s safety in the ravaging / dear comrade, dearest brother or the closest i’ll have by word and by distance / i draft like i could accept death’s inevitability like you do / to honor the burials of chickens and rabbits / dear comrade, dearest sister or the closest i’ll have by blood / i draft from what you’ve taught me about the borderlessness of the desert / the borderlessness of dykehood or the soil of your as-yet unplanted garden in the woods, because you let it be mine too / dear comrade, dearest cowboy tethered to this hand-state like me, i draft from a reality, an always-already then and there where poems can be themselves, and we can be poems, nothing else, existence and nothing more, a future with nothing to save.

andrea lianne grabowski is a midwestern lesbian occupying Anishinaabe land. her work lives in fifth wheel press, Scavengers, HELL IS REAL: A Midwest Gothic Anthology, and many other homes, including the self-published chapbook there is an earth after innocence. she is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee and former NMC Mag editor. you can find her on long drives being inspired by music, or peering in the windows of abandoned buildings.