Kylie Gordon
Nocturnal Country
This is not my life but the dream of a man who releases me from his brain stem each night. Like steam from a kettle, I rise out of his ear, domestic apparition meddling in a black kitchen, braced for morning. Once I was not a ghost in the dark, eye on the teapot, spoon in the jar of jam. Gelatinous gold figs gleam on my toast, more real than I. Invisible, I leave no crumbs on the floor, but instead lean over the dishwasher, hot aquatic machine churning at my pelvis like new life becoming itself: slow-blossoming palms, toes, fingers unfurling. Outside, the calm night darkens – so dark, I do not recognize my country: the neighbor’s yard made strange by a gust of wind, some nocturnal bird of prey, descending. The last time my body made sense to itself I was lost in the school library, wayfaring child, navigating the aisles by how they smelled: presidents, pungent; paperbacks, musty; poetry, sweet.
Kylie Gordon graduated from Stanford in 2002 with a B.A. in Modern Thought and Literature. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University.
