Self-Destruction and Other Disasters I Dream About

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. 

 

 

 

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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.