Lindsey Anne Baker
Lindsey Anne Baker lives, writes, and edits in Omaha, Neb. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Sugar House Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and Slope’s Left Facing Bird. Her first chapbook, Fine Warm Pulse, was published in 2013 by dancing girl press. In 2015, Lindsey received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. Her most recent full-length collection, This is Bad, was published in a limited run in 2019 by Gibraltar Editions.
Because I want to want to, not to have to
I’m always so sure this is the moment before the moment they tell me and so I want to eat everything and fuck you against the back of the front door
Driving over the bridge this afternoon I saw two kids I thought one was standing behind the other but when I passed them I saw they were standing beside each other one leaning back with his fingers curled around the chain link between his hand and air I remember because right then I knew I wasn’t home
Last week someone asked how to tell whether we write different stories or different versions of the story
Every morning you ask how I’ve slept
Still every night I try so hard to not sleep
Ars amatoria
In my fantasy I’m walking toward you
and I’ve never seen you
and just before I tell you what I call you
you push up the sleeve of your sweater
Later
after we have names
you bring me a glass of water
and I give it back empty
After you said you slept with someone else
I dreamed common things
My last lover came back
I kept my teeth
The next day I drove
past a man fixing traffic lights in midair
and then on to the mall
where I bought six pairs of cotton underwear on sale
carried them in their brown bag back to the car
because there’s a world
and it moves
I should tell you how that man who loved me said I walked ugly and awkward with caution
how even if I did before he said it
I did after
If we use ourselves as measurement
Every day I tell myself to drink the water and I don’t and I don’t want to
face the half of it there in the tall white Styrofoam cup
and I don’t want to walk to the break room to empty it into the sink so I place it upright on the bottom of the trash can or sometimes upright in the crumpled papers
and I leave and every morning the cup and the water are gone but the bag lining the can is always the same
a dried bit of banana stuck to the side
the reason why the day my keys slip off the edge of the desk into the can I pluck them walk them to the restroom wash them with a system of water and paper towels and industrial yellow ash-scented soap the way I used to before I felt comfortable touching things
I always write about his hearing aids and never the more obvious thing because it was never really a thing that he didn’t like to be touched
We had the carpet between us and later permission and then later warnings two minutes he’d say there was always the option to stop
So there are options
When I was young I read Charlotte’s Web out loud to my dolls and then empty rooms and invisible girls over and over my parents learned to ignore the sound of the story
I almost tell you when you start sending pictures of the orb weaver living above your back door
but when you describe how she eats her frayed web at night rests and rethreads it clean only for morning’s black minute you’re already saying everything I can say
I can work I can wait I can’t stop I can’t stop you