Liv Campbell
Yard Baby
At the helm of their ire in her little red and yellow pedal car, she gets at her
cousin’s ankles, though they are older and faster and good at sports. A small flash
of feet between plastic wheels. A jolt of cartilage and fresh knees. She is at the stage
of baby where they run drunk till they fall and come back to you for a tooth sized
bite of apple. I cup the fruit in my palms, my wait for her an afterthought
because she is losing herself in the yard, we are losing her in the yard. A tiny,
wild clamor, whose socks are wet from wading in the grass’ dew. How fast
she’ll settle into sleep after a swim. Her mother picks the dog up a couple more
times, as he is prone to walk off the deck. A Frenchie, which nature never liked.
A lot like us.The baby’s mother and I suffer from some undoing that stalked
us until it stole our shape. Totaled us. Our families brought us together to talk.
She looks at me and sees. We use fake words to make others comfortable. Alphonse
Daudet says pain is always new to the sufferer but loses its originality for those around
him, and this baby, her dream, her words, her proof of life, is a glittering, forever new
that stands, even when she falls, beyond love, at the rim of normal.
Give me normal God.
I hug the baby, hug her mother, give her the apple.
We are leaving for lunch. The yard dissolves into a backseat, and a kid
holds a pencil correctly one day to never doubt it again. Someone else
drives past the wreck on the right, and there is no dvd
for the small tv, no grass beneath my feet.
Van Life
I’m between a rock and a hard place: another rock. A chimney,
or what you and the guy who parked his van next to ours call two rocks
to get stuck in for fun. He looks like he listens to bands with names
like COMMUNAL NAPKIN or DEATH IS GENETIC, likes to smoke
till the Planet Fitness smells purple too, likes to call himself more of a carpet
guy when staying in a wood floored room, but he’s nice, and for two whole nights
never looked at me weird, though he snorts at the formations out
here, their resemblance to giant turd piles, and the hilarious crack of sun
with your face in it, dangling down, telling me to put my foot
there, telling me not to use my arms as much because they can also
let go. Because we touch, and I love you
every time, you’re pissing me off, so I put my foot way over
there, lose my breath to say fuck, and let Christian guilt
launch my body through ten thousand pounds of air with the velocity
of a thousand third graders who believe in themselves. I am
the gasp that makes it out, an outlaw of a swaying Earth, all
mortal potential, and kinetic blessings, my elbow, my gums,
warm, nicked with salted blue, and bleeding. In college I got high
enough to say something to a pilot, tumbled back to life, looking
up, cartilage whirring, the good things trying to break out of my bones.
I am returning, but there is no good place to land, not even in your good
hands. Past sound, I abandon any thud, you do not hear me shatter. I walk
on flat, unpiercing land, in my fist, a sharp edge of sky to cut the rope
when I get far enough, when I find a 7-Eleven and someone else to hold my weight.
Liv Campbell is a writer from all over, but most recently New York City. Her love for poetry was born when she started using a mic to read her stuff in random basements in Indiana. More of her work can be found or is forthcoming in Filter Coffee Zine, Triggerfish Critical Review, Big Whoopie Deal, and earworms mag.
