Eloisa Gearhart

Unworthy of my time or my glance
My hands plunged beneath the water
felt the coolness turn to ice and my skin began to sting
Washed myself of you and your foolish games
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Sour Dough (for my great grandmother, Icie)

Mottled, repulsive
Thin, cotton, flowery day dress
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Is it easier to be coded and hard to decipher?
For then

You can be labeled...
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Today
I splayed my body open with a thought
wrapped my outward inward
with a snap adjusted the knot
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in that splintered corner
at the top of the barn's raftered ceiling
where one standing below
may, at the right moment
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The First Draft of my Soul
*God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? —Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125
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In the dark hours, my head over sized and thick
thinking my neck would be crushed under its weight I dared not
a glance behind me, afraid I'd hear the snap and then
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Fourteen days before thirty-two
I looked like twenty-seven but the change seeped within me
slowly, pudgy fingers turning the contrast down
an old and bulky color TV where you had to fiddle
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Calm in a Box

11: 59 the black steams in a cup on the stand beside me from a box labeled 'CALM' in large letters and I can only hope that the blend of the black will do the trick:
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