SQUATTER

By Cleo Abramian

be my talismanic property
be my new
prize for wanting

the narcissism
of this hot world
cut loose like a blimp 

I came to revirginize 
my willpower, a white
light that won’t burn

it made me its food 
in the slow yes of drought
the plump kleptomania 

of my gaze has spread 
out over everything
like the stretched spine 

of a whirlpool, the frenzy 
of a sealed clam, I am a woman 
on the brink of a recital

which means nothing
like a good performer 
I move like gauze

pith, I blink, I spit
out desire, its filament 
biting up the hand

so long before you I sat on 
the earth like a crane, eyes queued 
open with rope, my mind is 

everything you want, overfed 
baby and its bouquet of teeth 
fish scales fileted like new perfume

the tyranny of my going 
will keep you alive

About the Author

Cleo Abramian lives and writes in Western Mass. Her poems have appeared in Shitwonder, b l u s h, dirt child, Solar Journal and elsewhere. Her chapbook, debt, is forthcoming from b l u s h later this year. She is currently an MFA candidate at UMass Amherst’s Poetry program.