I attempt nuance, divide,
sift the free flowing whey from the hardening curd.
I am but tape recorder,
saying the same thing on a loop,
my voice higher and higher with every playback.
I have never learned how to spoon the honey
without leaving the stickiness behind,
to stir clockwise in time with the metronome.
I am creation, the ticking of every second.
I place the heartbeat of every living thing in 3/8 time,
compose a jazz minute among the colors of the universe.
I cut apart the strings and rearrange them into scores,
shift the planets til they become stemless quarter notes
placed as far apart eons between them.
I hold my breath in the endless rests,
my raisin shriveled lungs refill,
a fortissimo scream that triples.
I am the ending to this eternal night,
My screech is the noise that erupts from the undiscovered center of the black hole.
The simultaneous birth and death of the red dwarf, the white giant.
What is it like to be the one who alters
and not the overworked clay beneath the artists hands
Ren Gay is a lesbian, autistic poet and artist from Fargo, North Dakota. Her work has appeared in journals such as Anti-Heroin Chic, The Laurel Review, Qu Literary, Ghost City Review, Gramma Poetry, FreezeRay Poetry, Persephone's Daughters, and others as well as the anthology What Keeps Us Here. She tweets at @RenKGay