Sydney Vogl
​

Death Bloom

pull your body out of the mud and dress it
in your grandmother’s fleece sweater
find the person you still think about
on a sunday morning when your lonely
bones have faded pink and pull open
their curtains, tell them it’s the last warm
day of the season even if it’s not and slice
an apple so thin you can see the whole
san francisco skyline through it
and let the slices melt on your tongue
because nothing matters
in a way that means everything matters
because you are calculating how fast
you can get to the coral reefs
and not thinking of the washing machine
which has flooded twice this month
or the way your father’s breath caught against
his teeth when you were twelve and he was
volcanic, don’t you see, your chest is blooming
and we should push the living room furniture
against the walls so there is more room for
swimming and touch the temple of your mother’s
graying hair because now we can see
the boulder tumbling toward us, but it’s always
been there, hasn’t it, haven’t your ears always
been waiting for the sound of a car rolling
off the cliff and you said you would learn
to cook if you had more time and speaking
of time, there is none, you are already
an exposed nerve being plucked away.

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Sydney Vogl currently teaches, writes and lives in San Francisco. Their chapbook, CRYBABY!, was chosen by Chen Chen as the winner of the 2022 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize and is forthcoming in 2023. They are also the author of the chapbook CALIFORNIA IS GOING TO HELL (Nov 2021, perhappened press) and the winner of the 2021 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize and the 2020 AWP Intro Journals Project. Their work can be found in Iron Horse Literary Review, Hobart, Honey Literary, Booth and more.