Ode to red that human pattern

Grace Gilbert

gutting a pomegranate
i am loving the primal

look

i am googling

i think I am in love
with my friend

seeds all over
the kitchen

i am considering last
week the highway

cars infrequent

that dark gutter

when i was saying i wonder
if we were ever in the same place

before meeting

google tells me You Would Do
Anything For Them

tells me listen for the Big Loud
Thing

i am thinking unethically now

looking closely at a picture of
your wrists

i am on accident
envisioning a childhood

haircut

picking seeds
from my socks

o so tired of red
of

indicating

it is a wide open
body

to love anything
at all

Grace Gilbert’s recent poetics & lyric essays can be found in the Adroit Journal, Ninth Letter, the minnesota review, plain china, Anomaly Literary Journal, Pretty Owl Poetry, Maudlin House, Twyckenham Notes, Vox Viola, storm of blue press, Sweet Literary Magazine, tilde, & the Gandy Dancer among others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and was a finalist in the Princemere Poetry Prize as well as the Adroit Prizes. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Pittsburgh where she consumes unholy amounts of cheese and dumplings.