Hannah Cajandig-Taylot
the pale of Northern Michigan
deer. About wanting something
star studded & purple. About building
a rocketship—something capable
of cosmic escape. Black holes do happen
overnight, & yes, I do
think about the waitress at Addison’s
restaurant & the time I went moonlighting
at a science conference, hiding in the flock
of wings. My gasoline smile. I think about
implosion taking many forms—the collapsing
of stars, a black hole born from oblivion. My body,
with its slumped posture on the closet floor. Radium
girls in cushioned graves. Nosebleeds. Hours
spent running towards tables of strangers.
I think about paradise,
or maybe walking beside it
one day in the rain, spinning
into bed next to an animal skull, about the desert
writing songs with my name. Am I the only one
who makes this shape while breaking, am I
the only bird singing
backwards, am I
the shuddering holding me together? This
might be another fever dream, driving
through Englewood, Kansas City,
Alameda Street—until I am bounding
across I-70, both the gun & barrel
of whiskey, the creaking hinge of a ghost town
door. I think about the astronomical
tapestries in an Air BnB off Don Gaspar,
the holes in canyon walls, a case
of bullets. Dark matter. About how
I don’t know the right way
to contain this wild
energy, how I don’t know who I am
behind a hotel bar, feeding mules
to wedding guests of people, & when I write
a letter to the universe, the only thing
that comes out is another cluster
made of stars.
***
Hannah Cajandig-Taylor resides in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where she is an MFA Candidate at Northern Michigan University and an Associate Editor for Passages North. Her prose and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Snapdragon, Tulane Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Sidereal Magazine, and Rising Phoenix Press, among others.