Christie Towers is a poet living in the Boston area. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her work can be found in Narrative Magazine, the Ohio Edit, SummerStock and Reality Hands.
No Sense
today my friend tells me
she doesn’t understand god
and later in the shower
I am thinking of all the times
I was alone with god
stirring rice in the kitchen
boiling water for coffee
in the dark sitting on the sidewalk
looking at near-perfect
cigar boxes waiting
for the sun to rise
nudging the campfire
reading poems outside
of the bus station
looking for pregnancy
tests at CVS running down
the escalator to catch the train
watching TV in a hospital
bed hunting for half-burned
cigarettes in hotel flower pots
googling what bird goes awooo woo
woo woo because god doesn’t want
to just give away the answers
god likes mysteries
and I remember the last time
I asked god a question
god dug some floppy
trade fiction out of god’s
bag and flipped the pages
said tell me when to stop
and the book was not
burning and the answer
made no sense
Unhooking the Body
Unhooking the body from the line
we try to see it differently, as if for
the first time: slick sheen, scaled,
silvery, green in the light of a late
summer afternoon. The boat skims
over the world below us. I said I
couldn’t look at its eyes, blackened
holes where once was something
darting, bright. Did it really think
this lure a fly or did it take the hook
into its mouth willingly? What do
we know of fish, their lives, this
life, writhing now between us.
Imagine the inside of its belly, unfed,
ribbons of red flesh knotted and
knotting. Imagine our fingers
untangling what we cannot see:
the pain of living, the hunger
that brought each of us here.
