KATY CHRISLER

THEM ABOUT THE HOUSE

Plucked inside
Bystander, always
Been my trouble.
Reorder the environment.
With and against, within
Without. A trap flourishes
When empty. Echoes mislead.
Your will and the will of others
Are what the hands must work for.
Not only like a tool but a tool.
An immediate reading of juxtapositions,
Pious show of unmasking. So, too
His hands are shaped by what they are
Asked to do. Her will is full. A seed
Contains the whole fight of episodic,
Inner nature. The parasitic gesture brazened
By mimicry. Trap a trap inside which
The oracle works to carry a symbolic load. 

COMING, AS WE SAID

No recent past divides the slow spiral
Of erotic spirit by means of word or force.
“I want a crown on my head” and solace,
Less deserving. Nor shall we call them vultures,
Those that flower with intelligence. Is not a bridge
Yet known as a bridge. A further gesture of fingertip
Memory, this might be the moment. An ideal spot
For fracture. I pull back the hammer. The harp.

Where is he that offers his neck? Evacuating
Along the softest veins, all shimmer here.
All too common but rust may blind us.

AN EFFORT TO UNRAVEL OUR EFFORTS

There is gratitude, silent, slated. Like a downed axe,
Scour marks the grinding surface. Were young.
I am strengthened by a change in velocity. But here
We tell a different story. Others unlike them.
You, inviolate and from the margins smother
Relief. Like meager research, logic sent us.

I reach out too far along the branch to pluck a fig but
My arms are by each side. Series of words wait
For something certain. The search goes on in hot,
Swollen heat. Penetration beyond instruments,
Beyond the curl back of your racing tongue. My lyrical vein.
My associated rift, obsessive image, affinity of structure.
A black recess is not quite what we supposed it to be.
Small burrower—stirred by internal tide,
Stay here long. Incisively
Dismay illumination.

Katy Chrisler received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has held residencies with Land Arts of the American West and 100 West Corsicana. Recent work of hers has appeared in Tin House, Conflict of Interest, The Volta, and Black Warrior Review. She currently lives and works in Austin, Texas.