Taylor Hamann Los holds an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is currently an MFA student at Lindenwood University. Her poetry has appeared in Parentheses Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Split Rock Review, and Rust + Moth, among others. She lives with her husband and two cats in Wisconsin. You can find her on Twitter (@taylorhamannlos) and Instagram (taylorhlos_poetry) or at taylorhamannlos.wordpress.com

***

My husband never asks

about the milkweed
in the refrigerator.
I don’t tell him I want 
to be a monarch, 
that I bruise my knees 
in prayer as the sun sheds 
its chrysalis each evening.

I drip honey 
on my sores, bandage 
them with box elder leaves. 
These are my offerings.
Forgive me; I  
have forgotten 
how to speak, my tongue
thick with nectar.

***

Kathryn

I remember wood smoke & whitetail,
bluegill still swimming under a frozen lake
as if searching for a sort of redemption.
All I want to ask you is how to clean a fish
with this dull knife, how to cook and eat
the translucent-pink sheets floating in the bowl.
*
I remember the sun like a bowl, the summer
my father & grandfather cut down pines
in the forest. I imagine them with a crosscut saw,
sweat & muscle, bark & splinter, song of breath
& birds. All I want to ask you is how the other trees
stayed standing when the snow came.
*
Grandmother, I remember the snow,
can imagine the red & white of ambulance
lights. But all I want to ask you is how
to be winter—how to tuck my legs under me,
& pretend they are the fish & I am the lake.

***

What I ask my body for

For lemon trees grafted at my throat.
For hydrangeas
in my blood to hum.

For stems to keep my organs tucked in their corners
like poems.

For surrender.

To open like oiled hinges, to be an orchard.

For satiety.

To swallow even my own bones—
once everything else is gone.

***

When you say you want to try again

I understand this:
islands are lost every day,
though the bony, bleached
parts of me will form
a new archipelago in water.

Most nights I pull only
nightmares from the harbor.
Gull and gut and salt,
a drowned Icarus.
I must wait for the storm
to leave my body
before I can put out
to sea, holes burned
in belly and sails.

I hunger for more
than smoked fish;
I have built you
from this ache.

***

Publishing credits

My husband never asks: Exclusive to East Ridge Review
Kathryn: First published by The Madrigal
What I ask my body for: Second place winner of East Ridge Review's Three Notch'd Poetry Contest
When you say you want to try again: First published by Rust + Moth