seed

nora treatbaby

we cannot tame time 
return or take back 
what is acted

in what order
do we collapse?                    ourselves or another
all harm is braided

I eager to clean the pantry
of my distortions, 
bathe in real skin
with real people
to see my actions unclothed 
with a madness that is 
empathy for myself.

and it was in a turning
towards me                    what parts of ourselves

we dreamt
severed 
I am the sister 
of my past selves,
turning towards you

SEED

NORA TREATBABY

and what is true
is me
turning 
towards

an assemblage of all
manner of people
that I have known
turning towards 
me associating with
the seed. 

One day we will be hurt in specific ways, like rent. I’m glad my money’s fake. 
My world began in the trees, behind what was being written on me.

and there
was us
turning 
without no
towardness

as if
a seed 
a sun
were not
in association
by the action

OF

nora treatbaby

Then in so turning I
blurt floras. 
there could be water
and light endless and sieving
one upon the other
in unbroken complexity
why is earth perfect?
I wonder to 
what degree has
infinity been verbalized
even my pussy
has a name
turning in a room
with all of you 
to slow presentation 
down to a crack
or pure mere. 
At home in vastness
with the lower leaves
absorbing the 
excess of our aspiration. 
Earth is not a planet
it is good to live
in a world w sky
my sun is yours.
The common circle
brought us to the
quasi-slaw of 
store credit
and sapling syntax
perhaps there is
life’s omnivorous 
wet which binds 
open the seed 
turning to
the hilt of some
goose’s horn
all distance is
a song through 
which no truth
can turn. I have
the witness of 
soft titties
but can a person
who gets food
all over themselves
when they eat
really change?
At some middle point
having had nothing 
but twinges 
of some allogenous fume
I collapsed from 
a fathom of my 
own abundance in panties 
(balls falling out).
I am of so many airports.
Can I just enjoy 
the sound of the 
dream ending? 
Let this be my
expanding mantra: 
memory made me weird. 
There has been beauty and now
there is you to receive it
quietly in the edge 
of still-sweetness

Nora Treatbaby’s poetry has appeared in E-Flux, We Want It All, and the Poetry Project’s Recluse Magazine. Her chapbook Hope Is Weird was published by Other Weapons Distro. Her first full-length collection Our Air is forthcoming from Nightboat Books.

Originally published May 2022 in poiesis 3.1 by w the trees.