Recall Has Become an Affliction by Kari A. Flickinger

Recall has become an affliction. The early years are

like-claws in the dark waves of rotating temples.
Their gait subtracts, and twists up there
in not-sleep, behind a sleep-mask

I am told is supposed to assist.

What matters withers, like a thirty-six-hour-old 
death-bloom, corpse-flower, I have lost 
traction with the winged crowd.

I expand to strained myth and shrink from 
familiar fingers. I cannot stand touch, the smalls 
of home. I need immersion in the salt of unknown

skin, it is a sickness.

This timid eye-glassed owl fed strange affections 
to the ravenous beast chewing on her sensory core. 

Years of unfolding as paper envelope with 
too-wet glue turns the body into mache mush, into 
unbelievable mountain floating in a speckled vacuum. 
Home, reduced to a floating blue marble below, with hope

he moves from parietal to hippocampus, mars
memory. He whispers, what is round may roll away.

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Kari A. Flickinger was a 2019 nominee for the Rhysling Award, and a finalist in the IHLR 2018 Photo Finish. Her poetry was published in Written Here, Riddled with Arrows, BHP, Door-Is-A-Jar, Ghost City Review, and Mojave Heart Review among others. She is an alumna of UC Berkeley. When not writing, she plays guitar to her unreasonably large Highlander cat. Find her: kariflickinger.com @kariflickinger.