Jesica Davis
​

“Nature invented bodies so water could party”

                                                — for Andrew Smith
                                                         1980-2021
​
“Nature invented bodies so water could party”
but this week it won’t stop raining. I refuse

to close windows                      it’s so cool
for late June                  and everything is damp,

encourages mycology, curiosity as the world
spores into space, but this humidity situates

into a cloud forest memory of paper
on the verge of hosting mold, skin and eyes

never dry, treetops outside my window
catching drops and letting go. Precipitation

is a cycle. You died                 a month ago, left
the party right when it was getting good

or at least interesting again, your body
sent to fire, evaporation of temporal

host. Disintegration. When nothing makes
sense I revisit the hope that at least we got

a new interstitial guide. I want us to meet
again at the lunar teahouse in a different

dimension, hit the intergalactic stripclub
afterwards, but first we must sip enriched tea,

enhance whatever vehicle we’re occupying, catch
up and rave together like days past that will never

happen again. Eventually everything — impulse,
inebriation, our time together — wears off.

Until then               I fling open windows, take
rainwalks with no umbrella, let the wet fabric

of this moment saturate clothes and hair
so that when I make it home, water is ready

to go: I crank the music of you so loud
that I can’t hear loaded complaints

from neighbors, knees, time’s passage, grief.
Is this how                        we are to party now?

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Ash and Ember

Some time around Christmas I got a rash on my eyelid,                                finally
saw the dermatologist right after Valentine’s Day. Those                            six weeks

made me want a red eyeshadow, reclaim infected shade.                          Makeup
is not my forte but I have learned which friends to ask.                        A cardboard box

arrived one week later: “Ash and Ember” brand in a hue named                Viscera.
I opened the package, used fingers to smear it on healing lids.                    As if

a wand. Wanting. What is it about a wound that                                         draws us in?
                    Ash and Ember:                                                                                          [OPEN OPEN OPEN]

I have been burned and staple-grafted back together.                              How lucky
it was mostly hand, not face. Forehead just a touch singed,                  hair grew back

by next season. Ash and Ember: return to carbon.                                     Kohl eyeliner
another tool in my beauty kit, still using a stick                                      from that last trip

to India: wax and ash. Return. The compost into which                        we plant ourselves
makes stories grow. Myths that die like flowers                                   a whole field of them.

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Jesica Davis (she/her) is a poet and technical writer from Chicago. She’s an Associate Editor for Inverted Syntax literary journal whose work has appeared in Dream Pop, Storm Cellar, streetcake magazine, The Laurel Review, Kissing Dynamite, and other places. Sometimes she makes poemboxes, which are sculptural interpretations of her poems.