#ryann stevenson

[tasteforrot]

THE NEW MIDWEST

Death is long. It grows. I measure my death's shadow against the doorframe give it a pencil tick for each flash of grim the world writes. My parents tried. They gave me a room with a lock on the outside, a mirror on the wall. I want to say never about a lot of things. I want to say better. I watch an orca beach herself at SeaWorld and feel the violet waters of the sound contracting in me, my death growing. it's not my death's fault that for every cage something is caged. That boys will be bad meat, and girls thrown behind dumpsters. I'm afraid by the time I make a life my death will be the new Midwest, like the forever of Kansas, where there are roadside lookouts you can climb but the only thing to see are other looksouts and all the death between them and the death before that, knowing you must somehow make room for life.

[lifeinpoetry]

                   . . . just stood there in the living room           looking around at all I’ve collected—                    taking inventory of what’s gotten in           without invitation                     and what I won’t let leave.

— Ryann Stevenson, from “HOST,” Human Resources

[intimatum]

Ryann Stevenson, Fucking Daffodils

[rabbit-light]

Near a Definition

I welcomed the woman. I put a towel on my bed and lay down. I told her my burns were tender, but what I meant was I still haven’t decided what my definition of privacy is. I told her I want to know more about my legs, but I meant to say release them. Please release them. She held my kneecap like a baby’s cheek. She touched her cheek to mine, the soft grind of skin, as when I once rubbed two light bulbs together. She pressed me hard into the mattress until I slipped inside, both above and beneath a sheet of ice. When she asked me how I liked it I said I’m tired of feeling punished. When she asked me what I wanted, she answered my silence with silence.

Ryann Stevenson

[tasteforrot]

INTERIOR LIFE

There's a fly in the house I can't kill.

I won't know if it's real until I kill it.

It darts through my periphery as my internet

yogi tells me that a cow

can be an opening. I turn my mat

to face the window

so I can see the tree on fire,

the red maple, but a truck that reads

MOVING? is in the way.

Imagine yourself as a child

watching, says the yogi, which I never

want to remember—

everything I had to watch.

I don't let her finish.

What she wanted was for me to take up space,

something about reclaiming joy

by thinking of my favorite childhood

TV program. Later, I give it a try

while folding laundry,

The Real Housewives of somewhere

on high volume to dominate

the persistent buzzing

in my ear. A Dwell

magazine placed on the back

of my husband's shirt

helps me get a proper folder.

Am I taking up space, with the proper fold?

In my house clothes I get on the floor

into extended child's pose and reach

for the cow opening. I press an ear

to the wood and listen for something

in another room,

in another house. What I hear

is a long conversation about me

that I didn't begin.

I hear my own voice from a distance:

I don't want to say the words of what happened.

Some days I'm floating around and don't know it

until I break the French press again.

[lifeinpoetry]

I hear my own voice from a distance:

I don’t want to say the words of what happened.

Some days I’m floating around and don’t know it

— Ryann Stevenson, from “INTERIOR LIFE,” Human Resources

[lifeinpoetry]

When she asked me how I liked it

I said I’m tired of feeling

punished. When she asked me

what I wanted, she answered

my silence with silence.

— Ryann Stevenson, from “HOUSE CALL,” Human Resources

[lifeinpoetry]

In all ways, I was right. With certainty, I would go on living. And when I woke, I still believed in you. In my desire.

— Ryann Stevenson, from “BIOLOGICAL CLOCK,” Human Resources