Kimberly Quiogue Andrews & Sarah Blake
Two POEMS
The Sea Witch Buys a Houseplant
At the Home Depot, each hanging pothos
looks, to her, upside down, a reminder
that in the dissembling air there is contained a terrible weight.
Nonsense, she thinks. Also, Is this what plants smell like?
She moves through the rows of greenery, packed together, perfect,
each with its small price sticker attached, and she thinks
about rot, how its lack
is merely the promise of its arrival.
I don’t know what she would want to say here
about the caustic properties of water,
but all these ludicrous pots are heavy with it,
each root fiber requiring its attention, its weekly trip to the well—
“Sweetwater”
As if everything else were injurious, even if pleasurably so, even if temporarily,
even if it made your hair look good
She comes upon a collection of sansevieria trifasciata
and, brightening, parts the stiff leaves to read the tag pushed
into the soil that looks like sand—
Snake Plant (Mother-in-Law’s Tongue, Viper’s Bowstring)
Low light
Do not overwater
She steps back and gazes at the pallet full of black plastic pails,
goes to the cashier and says she will take them all.
To find something that grows hard upwards despite its thirst.
She sees them already amongst the dim bones.
The Sea Witch Finds A Used Copy Of Walter Benjamin’s Berliner Kindheit At A Yard Sale
TO LOSE ONESELF // NICHT ZURECHTFINDEN // VERIRREN
In which everything one does is the fulfillment of one’s later theorizing about it
In which the past’s weak weft winds itself around the central bolt of the possible
& out of the many small openings the labyrinth is built in which we now stand
In this context a find and a steal are the same thing the market the woolen women
Half of the body the walls of the cave a thriving commercial enterprise
Which is really just a controlled series of losses mitigated by the popular conviction
That purchasing power increases our capacity to step forward the ability to have
The memories you want embroidered pillow reciprocated desire the carousel
Part of the appeal of Benjamin’s early prose is its oceanic quality: capacious
Melancholic or sublime tidal in its movement a sensation of floating while
Intellectually aware of gravity’s embrace indeed it is almost
Too on the nose she pays her neighbor and tucks the book into her purse
The scallop the fin at the hip the fear as gift and stitch to see what others
Will release from their possession is also to acknowledge what you’ve lost
Kimberly Quiogue Andrews is a poet, critic, essayist, and Pennsylvanian. She is also the author of BETWEEN, winner of the 2017 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Prize from Finishing Line Press. She lives in Maryland and teaches at Washington College.
Sarah Blake is the author of Let’s Not Live on Earth and Mr. West (Wesleyan University Press). An illustrated workbook accompanies her first chapbook, Named After Death (Banango Editions). In 2013, she was awarded a literature fellowship from the NEA. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and son.