Dear tingling sensation,
Dear I know you’re there,
Dear pressure point,
Dear relief,
Dear swimmer in the cloud of my eye,
Dear I waited three years,
Dear are you one or two?
Dear the ones not frozen,
Dear not in my headlight,
Dear Sir or Madam,
Dear as the woods outside my grandma’s kitchen window,
Dear cactus that suddenly died today,
Dear did I do it?
Dear humidifier, I’m so dry,
Dear dangerous, I’m ready,
Dear heart, they say,
Dear chopping block, here is a finger,
Dear isn’t that far away,
Dear in the next couple of months,
Dear you are quiet,
Dear do you hear me?
Carley Moore is an essayist, novelist, and poet. Her debut novel, The Not Wives, was published by Feminist Press in 2019. Her debut essay collection, 16 Pills, was published by Tinderbox Editions in 2018. In 2017, she published her first poetry chapbook, Portal Poem (Dancing Girl Press) and in 2012, she published a young adult novel, The Stalker Chronicles (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Carley is a queer, disabled, single, co-parenting mom, a sex-positive, intersectional feminist, #catwife, and Vans lover. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Brainchild, The Brooklyn Rail, The Establishment, GUTS, The Journal of Popular Culture, The Nervous Breakdown, Public Books, Rumpus, and VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She is a clinical professor of writing and critical creative production in the Global Liberal Studies Program at New York University and a senior associate at Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking. She lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter at @carleymoore2, on Instagram @fragmentedsky, or find her blogging at carleymoorewrites.com.
Image: “Hold Me” by Bobbi Le’ Rae Valentin
Pine Hills Review 