Scout Katherine Turkel

STARRING

They think I am not maternal

I am just a private mother

Your preference for the most intricate river

The earth gone shimmering

It takes everything

To be so feminine

I make one prediction

From fear of new appearance

I think I am at the door

I consider form alike a law I love

To be made meager

The costumed dewdrop

Signals a miscarriage of night

Miserable and equal deaths

My thoughts on pregnancy

Remain unprintable

I am unthinking the mountain

Nervously as clicking switch

The lilac run beneath the mountain

I could instruct them carefully

I could carefully develop an instruction

To locate that dimmer shore

To corner you

You for whom a light springs up

I think only of your work

Just kidding

I think only of your cock

I write a story starring your cock

To harbor the one prophecy

To memo my relation to shame

I return to technique

It is my “job” to know this

The technical patterning of sand

A shudder of waves and moss

A “burgeoning” springtime

The metal roots of things

Mornings composed of liquids

A heap of cherry hearts

The most delicate shells compose a face

That face that looks alike to yours

Tonight the leaves turn downward

The sky’s different path

A word for too much word

SCOUT KATHERINE TURKEL was born in California. Scout’s poetry can be found in bæst: a journal of queer forms & affects, Oversound, and Tagvverk.