1.
 
You live inside old photographs
of yourself, the ones where you look
like post-apocalyptic David Bowie
in the aftermath of a desert sandstorm.
 
You say, “I was so sexy then--so, so sexy.”
The look on your face betrays a fantasy
of self-objectification and I alone am left
to love you now.
 
2.
 
It rained this morning. Maybe something will grow in this city; become green. All the windows and doors were open to a nightmare combination lock ever turning, and despite the fact that no tell-tale dust exists here I have found that I am allergic to people made of flesh. All voices and itchy skin that sheds its leaves according to the seasons. To stay away from the edge of the cliff, I use the scripted language of the ocean close around me, all this water with nothing living inside. Rocks built from binary code spill out of me while I sleep.
 
3.
 
We don’t know where we are going,
but everything is burning and we need
to get there fast. We pack it all up:
the raccoons that live in your attic, the ashes
of your mother and favorite cat, and all the objects
you threw in my presence that remain
unbroken.

​

​Isobel O'Hare is a poet who was born in Chicago, Illinois but did most of her growing up in Ireland. She is the author of the chapbook Wild Materials, published in 2015 by Zoo Cake Press. She received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she was recently awarded a Helene Wurlitzer Fellowship. She lives in Oakland, California.