3 Poems//Oakley Ayden

Open space, and a farmhouse out a ways

—after Lucinda Williams

On Oklahoma road, I
inhale peace I wanna
birth one day. I know

it’s slow, the road. The
twists it takes to touch
just one stilled rise of

unnumbed sun trials my
soundness, my own
stamina-stiffed skin.

I let it wrack against
my lungs’ walls, let the
weary tissue soak sun

bathed calm against
odds, amongst the
oxygen, within wind.

In Georgia Once

Met Janet Fitch in Georgia once. Watched her
inscribe my Charis-bought hardback Chimes

down below

a sterling white pipe organ
wall, First Baptist Church,

Decatur. I came
to thank her for

the prose that
dribbled down

my brain the first time
I blew a boy at almost

age fifteen. As she signed,
I choked, heaving dried up

hunks of California
chit-chat.

Cracked curtains

Last night I cracked curtains
to haunt contented stars.

My hand wrung round
the bed’s bone white

wrought iron,
clutching cold

while spent potential slide
showed, remanding me roused.

Oakley Ayden is a queer, autistic writer from North Carolina. Her words can be found in South Dakota Review, Bending Genres, Bi Women Quarterly, and elsewhere. She lives in California with her two children and too many foster cats. Find her online at oakleyayden.com.