4 poems
from Every Last Thing
The Paradox of Self-Reference
so full of wanting I forget my name again
pile crushed down to a swirl of sounds:
the sound of indecision, of sex, of glee,
& at the end a lisped arrival to the place I never left—
cat’s scratch cornea and the smell of coconut
forever a model of loss tucked in with all
the smeared maps of having mark my words
I did find myself sketched on the wall
of that basement I knew my place
as a dot in the code a whole city of desire knew that
if I contain everything I cannot include myself
tame me, retain me I sang hold me faster while I sink
The Lyric Address
illusion of privacy
space behind water
back of the fall
you liked my lists—
I never heard yours
let’s try to meet
you said try to
touch push the limits
of this sacred dull order
why not leap off this
thought into ten million
more why not see
what it’s like newness
for the sake of the new
Activity Report
tie a bell around my neck
so you’ll hear me coming
I’m warning you O how
I am coming noise full
can’t help what came or
what’s to come here in
the hot coming nights come
on I know how you worry
I know how that sounds
but for just one night
it was exactly like a song
A Pearl on Your Finger
sealed sea led down
to sand a hook pierced
through my lonesome
hand I refuse this body
its singularity I refuse
the collapse of time
the unity of a moment
that can only be one
Alyse Knorr is a queer writer and an associate professor of English at Regis University. Since 2017, she has co-edited Switchback Books. Her most recent book of poems, Mega-City Redux, won the 2016 Green Mountains Review Poetry Prize, selected by Olena Kalytiak Davis. She is also the author of the poetry collections Copper Mother (Switchback Books 2016) and Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books 2013); the non-fiction book Super Mario Bros. 3 (Boss Fight Books 2016); and four poetry chapbooks. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Georgia Review, among others. She received her MFA from George Mason University.