Poetry by Kari A. Flickinger

I Know I Have To Take These Pills

but I have this block happening—I believe 
I am convinced 

if I stick them behind my tongue—the migraines 
will disappear.

My voice will come back—the trees 
will reveal themselves 

to me! Again! Allthing has stopped talking
to me—my host 

of inanimate lovers. Green is no longer
GREEN as I want

color should be—resolvable. To be. 
The cello does not

alight inside my chest—the violin has become
a barrow of strings—creaks 

over stagnant waters. I cannot feel 
the sun on my face. I go

outside now—o maybe the sun
through the borders 

of my window were more
eloquent 

than I can be. Typing has gone 
to shit. Fingers—steer me

wrong every time.
Five

to 5:30 with cars in between. How can
I swallow when this is all the words.

Allow me?

​

Nesting: Boiling

I’m up
too high now, faced with this beak. I
swoop elegant, curvy, bowed—I roll
ploughed, polished and feathered.

Dismantle myself for the sun with 
each new crust—great flowing below 
this blood—below your rock
my universe boils.

And even the universe is stunted lately. 
A should’ve-been whirling 
mass, I suck stars, encircle—I 
melodrama and too-much need you.

Goddamn break down this gravitational
pull—these neurons once fired, are 
white-hot as coal fleeing on air. Fluid
nature preens but never prevails.

You plucked me from xylophone 
bones. You, minus a G flat or maybe an A 
sharp. Molded sound from mud swathe
set afloat straw creation—haphazard, I 
float deep and wide into orbital eddies.

Then the toothed daughters
I bear from your clammy hands (as I burst 
into spontaneous being) scatter along 
our vessel—until this still lagoon catches.