SIX POEMS by SCOUT FALLER
sonnet 9.17
truthfully i’ve been throwing up
and not writing. truthfully I folded
over looking for signs of subhuman activity. truthfully there
was blood in the gusset. truthfully
it smelled like an old friend. truthfully my partner
with the full weight of their body
on mine and assured me no kidney disorder. truthfully
it is the foremost act of love and care truthfully i
don’t trust anyone. truthfully a bit of a repetition compulsion. truthfully a
rumination that houses itself behind the eyes. truthfully it
obscures seeing. truthfully in passing a tattered brown
office chair i thought, anything can be fixed. truthfully
i made note. truthfully blue trim on a white
facade. that part is true.
sonnet for running into your ex
oh my god hi how are you all? how is every single person here doing
the entire gang all two of you? that’s really great to hear that you’re
great and i am doing great as well. it’s so good that we’re all great
and it’s so nice to meet in this place i never wanted
to run into you although this was always a possibility you played out in your mind's
closed circuit looping the beat. let me proffer the
smallest bit of information that is totally serene and
permissible i’m coaching now! and i’m wearing incredibly distracting
shoes mules that look like they’re made of burnished baby skin
or the most newborn slaughtered calf like i took the final girl
from a horror movie flayed her and put her on my feet the
beauty and barbarism of them, like a breaded calf muscle seems
socially inappropriate to comment on now maybe i’ll see you at the thing
you’re definitely not going to maybe maybe see you later see you around!
9.2 sonnet
loading sound down the holster
of your throat or growling
below the nosey waterline
concerning doing what i say
the first fucking time— okay yeah okay
i didn’t have to wield my anger
carved ebony dagger from a
suspicious etsy listing i could chillax
crank it down to sotto voce
this audiobook begs me to
consider each spoonful, sit
flatly with loosed esophagus
blown open for chunks of stir-fry
praying to the god of maybe, which, tomorrow
credit card in the back pocket
where i wash it and wash it and wash it again
until flayed of its credit card skin, amen
dreaming of a thing they do not possess
my grief that i ate
black grape
yes and willingly
cat with fur attaché
gifts the window
quite late
river’s mouth
toes grow toes and other fungi
fire alarm sleep
housed in the children memory
christmas tree tinseled with hair trimmings
husk of your mothers fathers living
shortbread and chickenpox for sharing
city ringed in ice cream songs
holding the fog’s breath
down the street women pleasure
pools under crisped up cups
my finger is not so eager
but water has fingers, and so
palming tokens of purple-belled flowers
pupils bloom
with the suggestion of water
earlier still
skirts lost to more skirts
cowhide and red patent leather
orders a lager for the ride home
lovers would like me to turn them over
fucking into a wall of
unused sound, but i’m uncertain
if given permission
Kid’s Clubhouse Academia, an afternoon show
funny little how-was-your-day
a student lost the table where
the papers go she rode the elevator up up
down up up down no tables there
but the worrying sense made her
push and push on buttons
one person who would have the answer went on their
indefinite lunch break and everyone else got the date
wrong sent mails to a moniker
writing ATTENTION PLEASE RESPOND
to a dickensian character like
starbelly or drummelfoot you might
as well take your good mornings,
post scripts, follow ups and
quick quest-ions and light them
up in the atrium
the dean was putting on
a green monster mask—classic,
like a scooby-doo villain
stuffed linebacker shoulders
and the knees a little groovy ready to
leap out of a cabinet and award herself
one of the top fifty women in the field of yadda yadda
doing business, death’s realty
the editor emailed me to say we’ll take
the piece but the spelling
is not sufficiently british being a
pleasure-maker of what lies in front of me i replied,
consider it fossilised
in close approximation
of a face to face meeting
we scraped together dead
hyperlinks with one missed character
like a dropped hatpin, loosening the curls of the url.
my doves, i cry, the zoom link stays
the same every time!
scout
short and shoutable single syllable both a verb
and a noun like a boy _____ i say to
the wads of people asking me
myself in the starched khaki shirt big
breast pockets squared off edges,
dreidel knees jutting out
jumbling around in tick high grass
limbs extra pointy, hair stuck with gel,
or as a sheepdog nose pointed
cliffside trying to create a border
with motion, running running all around open air
corralling the rummage drawer bits of life
your lost keyboard keys, my split ends
to hold them here, this sun soaked
meadow, my peaceful tableau, my
love so low fence so daylong you can’t help
but be
cattle by it
Scout Faller (they/them) has poetry published in HAD, Hot Pink Mag, and Ursus Americanus press, with poems forthcoming in the tiny and lowly dirt children. They live in San Francisco with their girlfriend and their cat. They’re on instagram @boredgeoisie__. You can find more of their work at scoutfaller.com/poems.