Selected Poetry by Kelsey Britton

Photo Source: Unsplash

Make Believe Lover

I just want to be loved by the who-is-that

Head over heels with opening my body

to other body

Sway of the heart in the chest –

Pendulum

I read your features

the way psychics find maps in palms

You flush-cheeked in the cold

Body // heat

I love your body // beat

I don't know if your face imitates

an Oleaster // a Hemlock

in the winter

beaming in the soft light of morning // half-asleep

You are glass ear enchantment

forest fathomed and revered

That thumb line in your cheeks //

that sun line on your chest –

I can’t express

the fondness of the sweat

beading up // against // clavicle

You –

an amber flood over cement

a city doused in honey

You –

frivolity dune

orbit and rupture

Your surface brilliant –

A guidepost

A light post

A handhold in the dark

Eventual

There was an opossum in the chicken coop.

Its silver fur was brown at the turn

of its mouth.

Its eyes were two black bullets.

We guided it with shovels

into a trap.

It escaped by the next morning,

a metallic clang into the empty air.

Three days ago

I returned to my own life

after visiting my parents’ town.

Their house has linoleum peeling.

It has plywood cabinets

embedded in mold.

It has 10 empty oil jars

clustered on the counter.

It is beginning its eventual rot

back towards the earth.

After two weeks in the dry winter,

my cheeks are withered and pale.

I am “old” now.

Will almond oil rescue me?

Will retinol? I have rarely

rubbed sunscreen into my hands.

How wrinkled will they be

when I’m eighty?

How much will I care?

Kelsey Britton is a botanist and hedge witch living in Oregon. She is on a life-long quest of finding the mystical in the ordinary. Her work has been featured in Wild Roof Journal, SWWIM, About Place, Superpresent, and Eunoia Review.