how it is to get sober again

JC Andrews

ghost vocals  :  a hummingbird flying backwards  :  silent

   pianos filling a room  :  our caves coming out  :  an echo

party  :  watching yourself go numb in the mirror  :  the moon’s

   liver  :  tin-covered barn in the wind  :  harmonica  :  muscadine

in sun  :  gold veinery  :  throat unlocking like plums falling

   from a tree  :  saying arithmetic out loud until it becomes

only sound  :  music with no knuckles  :  dreams slobbering

   at the mouth like creeks somewhere  :  blood oranges  :  three

blood oranges  :  water colder than it looks  :  horses lying

   down for REM sleep  :  gasoline rainbows  :  april  :  leaving

the medicine alone  :  leaving the medicine alone  :  leaning

   into little languages that work you  :  the word kill

joy  :  the deer at the cemetery  :  an arrow being drawn

   back and back and back and  :  angels, duh  :  place where

key sticks  :  to love the stranger as oneself  :  to love oneself

   as the stranger  :  walking down Seventh and hearing

their name  :  the sound of a TV through the wall  :  wanting

   its voices  :  hugging you while you talk to someone

over my shoulder  :  praying in reverse  :  landline  :  eye

   grammar  :  calf head stuck in barbed wire  :  song stuck

in music box  :  field thick with lightning bugs  :  a country

   womb  :  the way a swing keeps going  :

about the author
JC Andrews

JC Andrews

JC Andrews is a lesbian poet from Springfield, Arkansas, with an interest in poems that work as an un-ing, poems that hold questions as a form of caretaking. Her work can be found in Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, and Salt Hill Journal. Most recently, her manuscript, Of an Ilk, was a finalist for the 2024 National Poetry Series, and her poem “Gargoyle” was the first runner-up of the Palette Poetry 2024 Sappho Prize for Women Poets judged by Megan Fernandes.

Other works by JC Andrews


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Unorganize this Mothership