High Horse

By Coraline James Seksinsky

poem for a tooth, tooth as in dream

Calcium deposit building up, everyone who can cash a check on their name. If I let my guard down, remove all obstacles between me and myself, the notion goes, then the scheme might just work. Goddamnit I need a dentist. I need a road, a saber for a beast.

I dreamed of robbing a bank as a child. Of assassinating the president. I wanted to get one over on someone. My friend said he thought the same. Then the goal was returning from the dead alive. I have since learned that getting out of your life is not always a goal you can count on. 

I brush my teeth once a day as much as I brush it twice. With weak Irish teeth and a penchant for sweets, I should have been done in by now. But, here I am, buoyant save a couple long past cavities. Someone has to be looking out for me.

What was that even about

Ripped backed shirts always remind me of her 

when she had glass cheeks, 

when some people theorized 

It was just liquid in stasis

Floating there, holding up

letting the light pass

I never recovered from the quizilla “which anime romance are you?”

I excavate old youtube comments. Hoping to find what I lost there. 

I learn about love and sexuality reading Naruto fanfic off quizilla. 

Gara shyly kissing the bosom of some young shinobi, baying moans as permission. 

I hardly left my room that summer. Except to hang out with Nate or go for a long walk in the woods and contemplate what separates my life from the fiction I woke up everyday to live inside, hoping if I understood the sun filtering through the trees, painting the stone arch bridge you would find if you followed the dead rail bed long enough, then adventure would lurk behind a shadow. Reach out and touch my shirt, spill on me like mustard. Make me feel alive in my body and not simply waiting to be alive. 

Smoke chews up the west, making its way here, ready to knock on our door. I hope you have ample supplies, cherries, cola, roast beef and the like.

I hope death is living in your memories

Coraline James Seksinsky is an artist and writer who’s lived the vast majority of her life in Cheshire County. Accumulating a series of personal creative milestones in the secrecy of basements, bedrooms, and barn attics, public performance was few and far between. Names changed, records were released and forgotten. Her poetry focuses on themes of memory, culture, violence, modernity, and the pursuit of equanimity.