SCALLOP

no bones, no eyes, no
soul no wonder I tell
my secrets to you

filled with sea, milky
and fat with want

RING FINDERS DOT COM

Close to here, below the full moon
a gram of gold is buried under down –
my hot hands worsen the illusion of nothingness
and threaten melt. I ask a child that I love how
something can be brought back. She says
say ‘O, glorious god – please melt the ice
so I can find my ring.’ I know asking god
doesn’t make anything unlost. Her mother cries
to me in the cold kitchen, curses names
and weeps at the sight of last bones.
I do not know what I am intended
to release in witness to her grief –
I am meant to lose
gold things. There are men
out there who recover rings.
Their fee is what you find
sufficient. So, how can one
measure the retch of loss?
I barely missed it
when I had it.

STILL LIFE

Michael reminds me that when you lay the dead hand
you cannot control the mouth of the bird

at some point, a being is forced to feed itself
through confinement or starvation

the driver has no control over the road
& my offerance can’t force a tongue

ten mourning doves greet two lovers on the other side of the city
I receive an email that tells me misalignment is not to blame for my pain

my devotion has bankrupt me
how like a stone it is to wait

NOT GONE NOT FORGOTTEN

for Rebeca

to be divorced from something is to create
an immiscible thing some sort of nothing

to lean meaning on, where every time a woman leaves
a city it snows hard and purifies her want for ugly

somewhere, there is piranha in a hotel lobby
with the face of a man she was once tied to

a cathedral of faith has a thousand narrow steps
fit to keep your thighs closed and jaw tight

every heel to concrete there should be a repetition of a lesson
one cannot fuck their way atop Love Mountain

man has always rejected these channels to god
and who are we to tune the dials for them

still flesh is not life she said, running
her fingers over the wound in angora

yes, flesh is not life but we are chained
by what we consume love like factory farms

love leaves us pilled and wanting free
range and a bird with a story and a name

o my harmless no thing, I won’t let you angel
in any man’s redemption arc I swear to remind you

there are lots of blues to be seen and skin
with redolence close to laundry and milk

the sky split from our congruence in a cell tower
is where our leaving faith has bound us

sealed with last season’s plum
and locked with a skeleton key

I must put an end to coincidence I said to her
desperation for luck is famously not a logic

so today, may we be two hounds
circling a collapsed silo

on the hunt for more alive
this work of a woman who is free

Carson Jordan is a poet and curator. She is the founder of MIND PALACE POETRY, a third space inspired workshop series, and the inaugural Poet in Residence at the Ruth Stone House in Goshen, Vermont. Her full length debut collection, DEAD HAND, will be out with b l u s h Summer 2026. Her work can be in Bruiser Mag, Noir Sauna, high horse magazine, and ritual dagger zine.