Hajara Quinn

Boom Town

I am more heliocentric than Nordic
death metal, but less heliocentric
than a sunflower.
I named my discontents Boom Town
and watched them booming
like jade plants in a fit of sun.
I ate my lunch in a fit of passion,
my lunch meats folding and unfolding
their labials into my mouth.
I am more carnivorous than a wooden flute
but less carnivorous
than a Venus fly trap.
Every time that wooden
flute comes along, pampered
on all sides with its wooden
notes climbing out of the lap of Namaste
and sounding out a peaceful glen
one sensuous syllable at a time
it undoes every
image that came before it
including the lunchmeats.

Ride Hard

I nearly never happened
is what every oak tree must feel.
A deep improbability of the self.
Otherwise why keep on
pushing on more intractably down,
hearing further into
the echoless earth.
Twenty three days until the equinox
and the muscles beneath
the sidewalk are already beginning to flex
their pectorals for the noon sun.
The anxiety of improbability
stirs us all.
I meditate until I am moss.
The acorns that remain ride their trees hard
Ride hard and die they say to me.
One of the beautiful things
about moss is the scale of exertion
is not extravagant.
The other is the color emerald.
The other is the color emerald bringing
almost nothing to fruition.
Bringing neither fruition,
nor ruination.

Hajara Quinn lives in Portland, Ore. She is an assistant editor for Octopus Books and the author of the chapbook Unnaysayer (Flying Object 2013). Her poems have appeared in Sixth Finch, Ilk, The Volta and are forthcoming in Gulf Coast.