heart hatch taxonomy

In February you waxed off my pier, you were jaunty in your exodus,

       mariner’s revenge bringing your teeth to gaps on the mandarin of
       your mouth. Even though you stole my blue raincoat and didn’t leave
       a note, you looked jubilantly incautious in a final kind of way. Beatific
       in abandon, piano-players hands to the ellipsis, your breasts
       shuddering over your fated chest plate: you, you were always
       one to suffer a fate worse than cardio-organic evacuation—no, you
       were holding your knuckles in your palms over absolute void. And
       your mantles that I had so ardently admired were smashed glass in
       the archive of that moment, framed by driftwood swollen in my sea
       window. You left me, and did not ask me to join you. Naturally, you
       wouldn’t solicit companionship in your journey. You wouldn’t juxtapose our paths.

—JULY WESTHALE

July Westhale is a poet, activist, and radical archivist with a weakness for botany and hot air balloons. She is a 2011 Lambda Literary Fellow. Her poetry has most recently been published in University of Wisconsin’s Women in REDzine, Generations Literary Journal, Hinchas de Poesia, WordRiot, 580 Split, Quarterly West, Muzzle Magazine and So to Speak: A Feminist Literary Journal. Her poetry can also be found in the recently released anthology, Conversations at the Wartime Café: a Decade of War 2001-2011. She currently lives it up working as an editorial intern for Copper Canyon Press. www.julywesthale.com