Three Poems

by July Westhale


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​[The same hands that cut a grapefruit so the star smiles upright]

The same hands that cut a grapefruit so the star smiles upright
at an unblinking ceiling can cull a congregation of hayseed
circumnavigating the globemallow can discern which refuse is worth
sparing can split the shutters like a body leaving a room
to consider the family of Gambel quail can choose to rap
at the pane of glass to warn them of the coyote or roadrunner’s
stealth approach can be retaught autonomous functions
so fingers that have heretofore been unable to react except as a unit
can separate notes for treble and bass clef and because hands are not
the heart nor the interpretation of the heart they can do anything
worth doing badly and without conscience and on a loop even
without a stutter of humanity and by rote like prayer like a desperate hopeful prayer



ars poetica on the CA-1

In some versions of the story, there were days before there was light.
Day, at the time, was not defined by light and not-light,
nor time, but by a series of steps, things checked off a list.
Heavens, which refer to the area above earth,
including the stars, which had not yet come, above
the earth, which was not made on its own prevenance but alongside
heaven and before creatures. In our own version, we can afford
to be beings who skip ahead. In our own version, there was water
and light and stars and people and then there was the road trip.
The open dashboard and the expanse of space, initially formless,
that replicates itself in velocity and lumens. The unwashed feet
upon that dashboard. How traffic, from some measurable distance,
sounds tidal. As in, connected to the moon. The choral song
of the expressway, the ocean at our elbows, just another, vast
and formless heaven.



ars poetica

The moment the poet sits down to write a cat barfs
but the poet’s job is to persist despite all odds, even vomit
mostly the poet wants to remind themself of time before the world got in
before they had a favorite stove burner, typing-related injuries,
student loans whose balances seem every year less real, cat barf, yes
but maybe further than that—the time before any moment they didn’t take
seriously enough, like that morning in their early twenties in Santiago
after a party that went on too long when they made French toast
for the foreign exchange students from Paris, who didn’t get the joke,
longer than that, even, though gently bypassing every childhood time
they chose to watch a meteor shower in an orchard which was followed
by every teenaged time the same thing happened, except with fingerbanging.
The truth is, there was never a time before the world got in
This isn’t enough for the poet. They want to go to back to the womb,
and this is why you can never ask them what their poetry is about,
at least not in polite company, they want what they’ve always wanted what
they’ve always always wanted, which is to climb back aboard the great uterine
elevator, press all the buttons, and fall asleep.


July Westhale is a poet and translator. Westhale's work has been published in McSweeney’s, DIAGRAM, The National Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, CALYX, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere.