Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Womandream
We are living in red,
in the creasework and blood.
Admit it: we are living
in something like red—cheek-pink
calmed into evening, the lovers feeding
off the skin-heat.
It has always been 95 degrees in this
room. Cool yourself. It has always been
my dream to burn to death when asked
which I would prefer. Are we living in that red
tip of old fire consuming us slow? Are we
destructing like we were promised? Admit it:
you’ve thought about being yourself and not,
the cold space between. Admit it: you’ve bled
from your own folds and called it art. You’ve wanted
to hang it from the ceiling and charm a child to sleep.
You want to repaint
the room. You want—
Caroline Chavatel’s poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Nimrod, and elsewhere. She is an MFA candidate at New Mexico State University, where she is assistant poetry editor of Puerto del Sol. She lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and is co-founder of Madhouse Press. (updated 12/2017)