Category: Cori A. Winrock

by Cori A. Winrock

Dear ____________,

I’ve taken to pinning patterns on your bedroom floor

where we dragged the sweating moon.

Practical astronomy—our seam allowances

smaller than a sewing needle’s eye. Above us, the ceiling strewn with flowers

cut from the leftover wallpaper of another room.

If you can’t dampen your grief,

what will keep your fingers from being lured

under the needle in sleep, from the bared teeth

of the feed dog gathering up fabric in the wake

of our hands? Remember—one stitch fired

per footfall means fewer discarded suits.

If you can’t forgive your scissors—chalk this constellation overhead: the long arm

of the machine where we turn & turn again the whole body of your future

daughter’s spacesuit.

About heirlooms, you know what they say— + We will have to split one

needle / this winter—one end for me, / one end for air. +

How we make do and mend is not always fair.

from Little Envelope of Earth ConditionsFind more by Cori A. Winrock at the library

Copyright © 2020 Cori A. Winrock
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Cori A. Winrock

I carried one grief while courting

another—

Because the moon pulled in

a tide of early dirt—

Because I could not bury both

my mother and a child

Because the living

child wanted to go to that place, mama—

With the beautiful stones, where people leave

flowers and presents

And now we are up each night with her sleepless

fear of falling

into those dark holes.

Because the dirt was too—

And my hands were—.

I’m throwing red thread over my shoulders,

salting my grievances.

Listen, in the woods

we are banished from—

the owls are giving back the bones

of the ones—if they lived

we might have loved.

from Little Envelope of Earth ConditionsFind more by Cori A. Winrock at the library

Copyright © 2020 Cori A. Winrock
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Cori A. Winrock

The moon scrapes her face across the body

of the ambulance idling below—O little empire

of emergency, O altar of resuscitation: I kneel down in you

like I kneel my grief down in the dive bar—throat haloed

in administered kisses, mouth full of salt.

Or this is a grief that refuses to arouse

even a candle

of a name. So I do not offer one. I genuflect with the light.

And so what of the lawlessness

of these rescuers in white—wild west their tendencies of mercy

then none. Pistols blazing to observe who draws first.

Then the single bullet straight through my surrender-

raised hand. See how even the smallest hole still smokes.

I bring the mob that knows to light the monster

on fire & we do: the ambulance keening, the ambulance as ablaze as the virgin

mary’s heart. And so what if these are my marys

burning? Or that I meant to say

my mothers. My mother’s body disbursed

in flame. How a body is burned until gathered,

until it remains—. And O to be the curve of the ambulance’s bones,

its frame picked to glittering

in the parking lot. The birds now recircling—a moment blown

backward as if from a blast of electromagnetic waves. I strip

off our hospital gown and release it

out an open window. The ash ascends as a humiliation

of sparrows. I lay myself down in the afterflash

of the ambulance’s light. Wait for my temperature to rise.

For you to come press your wrist against my wrist

to see if my pulse is still

tucked inside. Over and over the ambulance shudders

like a shocked heart, revives.

from Little Envelope of Earth ConditionsFind more by Cori A. Winrock at the library

Copyright © 2020 Cori A. Winrock
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Cori A. Winrock

Some days no one is my mother

but my mother. & my mother is no

longer a distance that cinches itself—

the flush on flush of the new

fever, the baby’s first floral-

heat nursed down—with a telephone

call. I could not gather, could not

collect your voice in fits

in tinder in sleep. So the flowerbeds:

empty. The endless ringing: all hesitation,

no digging. I wake to bury

you again, stumbling

for the rotary receiver on its vine—

swinging from the wall of a house

I left burning-small: votive

light throwing off no sound.

In the yard the petals all flame

& lantern. In the crib

my daughter moro-s herself

in heartbeat cycles, limbs sparked

apart with shock. The smoke of us both

rises: like a moon: like a pulse. & I am

alone in our surveillance, our time-

lapsed fevering burst into a single bloom

: the resurrected echo-light of your ambulance

dissolving through the walls.

from Little Envelope of Earth ConditionsFind more by Cori A. Winrock at the library

Copyright © 2020 Cori A. Winrock
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Cori A. Winrock

O four cornered room

in which we tuck the ever-

developing light of our warm

bodies. O snapshot, O ether

-ized flash of childhood—swarm

of chemicals murmuring together

to form empty sky, exposing

day’s blue dissolve from blue.

O bad 70’s plaid sofas

& pearl snapshirts, costumes

fading like Fisher-Price cars

on washed out lawns. O moon

boots without stars.

O family re-gathering as light-

seep, as grief. O ablation

& emulsion & actual moon—

you day-lurker, you—

balloon I imagine deflating

above our duplex—why the resistance?

Tell me who was in our living room

to capture this instant, whose hand

was shaking us into existence.

from Little Envelope of Earth ConditionsFind more by Cori A. Winrock at the library

Copyright © 2020 Cori A. Winrock
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.