Two Poems by Caroline Crew

after frequent showers

I quit the ceremonial garbage—

keep smoothing the plastic cover:

desires should be kept flat

to preserve human accidents.

A picnic in which the ants

terrorize our endings & we beg them

to endure our sugar. We more

want to gather flowers, the park

a castrated pasture. We were

not made for wilderness, too-

smooth shells & unlost showers.

The rain comes upon us again.

What is more to be lost: the hero

at sea or its water with no escape. 

the face of all the world is changed

It is a blue planet & I admit

I don’t fully understand the mechanics of tides:

it’s enough to know the moon is gone,

replaced with a name I never stop repeating,

repeating. Sweet with me,

translate empire as small pebble,

keep these old songs rhythmic.

Home is only ever a string of numbers.

That anyone can decode this system

means they are living on your exhaled air.

CAROLINE CREW edits ILK journal. She is the author of several chapbooks, including Caroline, Who Will You Pray to Now That You Are Dead (Coconut Books, 2015). Her full-length collection Pink Museum will be out from Big Lucks in 2015. Currently, she lives between Old England and New England.