Freesia McKee is a working poet. Her words have appeared in The Feminist Wire, Lavender Review, Rust Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, Sundress Press’ Political Punch anthology, and If You Can Hear This: Poems in Protest of an American Inauguration. Freesia’s chapbook How Distant the City is forthcoming from Headmistress Press. Currently living in Florida, Freesia represents the southern half of the poetry and performance duo The Subtle Forces.
An Icy Stop
Flying down the gorge You met her
Jealousy proverb in a store
window Took All the garbage
meadows The trash I may be into
Telling Very
your thigh your tie dye your
tie around your next I am
a dog who digs
everywhere Couldn’t unstick
that unearthed feeling Burrowing
Drawn out and foreshadowed
Caught up In the
shallow ditch Garbage trucks
echo The raccoon of the alley
Your trained eye for plant ID You’ve
keen a train Your light box on empty shade
My knee always A mouse
who milks a cow or goat but not
a Chicken melts and melts and like an Icy
strip someone placed in the park And
maybe even at the table
I riff on you
The Dorothy Allison Vertical File
Goes down easy if I too perfected
Your complicated past feelings into
best sleep I’ve had in lungs
or more like you’re a song with everything in it
That live smoke The power strip with all the lamps
wouldn’t stretch if I didn’t wear your boots
Devoted so fully to the library with the woman
I was already looking for
in the Dorothy Allison vertical file
where boniness rests meant to sell such I’ve never felt
like a new phase or astrology appealing and open door
I mean all the patience for ink
Why do we have examples in our families
of men who lived the way they wanted
when Dorothy Allison thought she might die
after writing her first book she put everything
into it Don’t you Think I brush stroked
substances two pillows
under our heads Other seasons can’t
seem to carve and we undersell ourselves but
yes she was still there
At the Door
landed for her
twins in other systems
spraying beams
twilight staples this city
competitive fishing
my backpack unmovable
turn off mule
being mind then
even me the sudden
set the sun and vice
grips down
the seat and tee
dusty
green and knocks
off follow capable
I am asked and find
an inlet seam