Julia Kooi Talen

missing folds

if i had a blue dove or a soulmate—

but—

i’m convinced i’ve lost

stardust & lemon juice

tastebud & bone—

things that comprise a soul. my soul smells

of burning petals

and unswept floors. things that nobody needs.

i’ve slept too much so far this summer, june almost half way

gone, i can’t stop

looking looking looking that night

we roved the village labyrinth

knowing too much about airplanes and miles

those humid nights at fish bar

warm vodka sodas, my best friends sharing lipstick-

stained camel blues, decades

ahead,

our folds, in tact.

i taste memory and make outs so fiercely some days

i miss, i miss, i miss, if only i

wasn’t too knotted thin with air-
y remember -ings.

if only you came back.

spindle

a spider makes a nest every night where the door opens to the back porch, to a slab of concrete.
a robin tried to make a nest for two months on a friend’s porch. blue eggs fell through the cracks.
splattered like yokes in the pan, dead eggs like my tongue when i’m afraid
anxious alone i scroll through tinder again looking for another poet but i only find finance and men.

my father told me my aunt went back to being straight and i tried that too but it didn’t work.
it wasn’t true. the hole i filled with swedish fish on tuesday nights when no one else is home was true.
i see that spider every night but in the morning she’s gone, had her fill of flies, she’s doing her own thing i
guess.
or perhaps she, too, sleeps long, misses her ex, dreams of moving back to new york.

i’m writing an essay about negatives in photography i don’t know
how they’re made but i try to consider negatives as choices or people or bugs that come in and out of 
my day. how did the rock get her stripes? how does the beer taste this way? how does my skin dimple?
i saw a snail on my walk this morning and thought about moving as slowly as them, basically stopping.

that night the phone buzzed, i looked up apartments on zillow  in brooklyn before the spider came back.

cardinal longing

wing. i wish—

to spin a nest of vine and silk

for you. bring your liver

your femur and lay in 

what’s lush—

half-notes in the body, our breath, open envelopes.

teal dawn—    

scarlet flicker—

i want to bring this red bird home, give it sugar and seed, see

a future where you and i lay gay on sundays

 in a hammock 

buy a chicken at sprouts, make a roast, make

love in  between every swoop.

but the cardinal flew—

  —away this morning when i—

 tried 

to take her picture

and so and so 

did you—

last sunday.

Julia Kooi Talen is a queer essayist and poet living in the midwest. Find more of her work at juliakooitalen.com.