Poetry from Mary Crockett Hill

Mary Crockett Hill's A Theory of Everything was released this month by Autumn House Press. I'll post an interview with her next week in honor of National Poetry Month, but for now please allow this poem, which appeared in Pank before it became a part of the Autumn House collection, to serve as an introduction. (It's not exactly for the kids, so I'm not linking up with the Poetry Friday crew...)

Why I Gave Up on Astral Projection

My body, when was it
I realized you are so full
of shit? Literally. Shit.

The food and the churnings
-- all the blood-heavy
mass of you. The old binding

between us, now fixed.
There was a time I did not know
I even had a body.

I was all in my head,
nouns vibrating
like tiny harps.

It seemed inevitable to float
above those organs, that skin
so likely at any moment to slip

from my supine shell
and surge into the universe.
(I dreamed I could leave

then come back.
Will such faith also return?
The whiskered self

shaved clean again
by the cutting ache
for flight.) There is a blue cord

holding me back. And more --
the children, the child in me
who now knows what she eats,

my neighbor's dying lover, his rickety
lawn chair, the bend of my mouth saying no,
the waiting, the laundry, the need

to spoon and stir in a room
that will not be the moon
no matter, no matter how I worship it.