Because Your Makeup Has Become Corpse Paint | Erica Brunner

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Erica Brunner is a poet from Seattle. Her poems are included in Hanging Loose Magazine, The Monarch Review, WomenArts Quarterly, the Portland Review, Bear Review, Pacifica Literary Review and elsewhere. Her first chapbook is entitled The Sun is Full of Bullets, also available from Dancing Girl Press. She earned her MFA in Poetry from the New School.  She currently lives and writes in Brooklyn.

 

 

Because Your Makeup Has Become Corpse Paint

We sit cross-legged
on grass
wet from morning sprinklers.
We’re devoted
without worshipping
without a plan
with dirt

in our palms.
We’re almonds
we’re lavender
we’re dust
steam
orange juice
chrysanthemum tea.

We’re filtered now,
cool air through a grate.
We chase

the last drops of water
from the faucet
to the white ceramic sink.

We’re honey
we’re rivers
we’re lakes.

We chase the triumph
of a moon
with half empty beers
raspberry-stained palms.

What always takes me
to the river
the river that pulled us

where I scrambled
over dirt and rocks
to shit behind trees

where you couldn’t see me
where I sat in your graveyard
where I became the expanse.