I ask you to help me move
the cadaver: you demure.
I ask you to help me conjugate
French verbs: you aver.
I ask you for the sun & moon,
to rewrite the dictionary,
to decolonize modern love.
I ask your help in coming
of age, with middle age,
with contractions
and police records.
I ask you to preserve me
from officialdom, to
wait for hours while
I paint my face and set my hair.
I want the pure thought, unchained,
smallest units of language
conspiring to become other
as they balance, like
molecules of air.
Virginia Konchan is the author of a collection of poetry, The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon, 2018), a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017), and two chapbooks, including That Tree is Mine (dancing girl press, 2017).
