hypochondriasis is making mortality a hobby

expected is the bleed of days,
supine inside the water
of severe telephone conversations, you start
a regular rotation of new
deities: the good lamp, a yolk
pressed into a sun under thumb unbreaking,
a finger of butter on the cast-iron, 
things to look to, to ask,
does the melting scream of fat
know where the death is? is it
holding it in the yellow of its own
pale, sizzling stomach? the window
is all picture now, no place.

you spin your lazy susan of gods. 
they are all for eating and they are moving — 
they are laundry then the small number
of ventilators then the small number
of people from your hometown demanding 
release from their porches/husbands/unflooded
lungs. every once in a while, a crayon portrait
of your housemate crops up underneath your hand
like fire you didn’t see yourself starting. every once in a while, a jump
in neuroses. the air will not
wash its un-hands for you, the mail
has no molars you can pull to make it
uncomplicated/unvirulent/vegetarian. 

the movies stack their glossy bellies
on the backs of your nights,
the fear flips over like a dog in love;
one side of the morning is knowing you’re dying, 
the second side is knowing you’re not,
the third is the window, the picture, a testing
of lymph nodes and inventive trinities,
less now for the answer to terror
and much more for the brain that isn’t allergic to it. 

ξ

Claire Oleson is a queer writer hailing from Grand Rapids, MI. She’s a 2019 graduate of Kenyon College, where she studied English and creative writing. Her work has been published by the Kenyon Review online; the University of Kentucky’s graduate literary journal, Limestone; the LA Review of Books; and Newfound Press; among others. She is the 2019 winner of the Newfound Prose Prize. Her chapbook, Things from the Creek Bed We Could Have Been, is available for purchase here. She currently lives and works in NYC.