to love is pearl medicine

terrifying transformation

oozing grit and spit

unwinding to original aura

to love is unveiled garbage

poems in the furrows

a restless gypsy at the crossroads

earthward and earth bound

hardest homecoming

a house with the dirt still intact

i am covered in blood and shit

still beautiful unworthy

to love is to give up the ideal

find orchids in the muck

overcast freckled paradise

a ladder a painful door

you give me granite and agate

hard shine an eden where people eat

sleep fuck cry laugh

where we sharpen our pencils

to praise the ordinary

i resist it all

wanting evanescence

you give me the thick tang of reality

a cup filled with my own history

and evasions a choice

i’m rattling the bars of the cage

drink up you say drink up

by Maxima Kahn, first published in Tule Review