I Came to the Farmhouse

Blue, my goose footsteps.
I haunted me
all around my edges,
following all girls,
I concepted.
Trying to learn from
an underneath secret
along the fog,
the longest interest.
Trying to learn from music
what would be music.
All the girls, all the girls.
Haunted and lived.
I went. Blue in the gut.
Someone montaged
what they become:
the moon, quickly.
Then, about glass.
I am safe against the
blue goosefoot china inside me,
leaning my mind.
Against gone. Against gone.
The idea about the
family exceeds the picture.
It stranges openings,
not door where
my self-over-the-edges
is the landscape arounding.
The purple coat
where I push the taiga.
Catching up to the
three of them would be my best way of speaking but
the girl where I lose my footing
turns, asking “What are you?”
I lattice. Across. I in the bulk footsteps
concepted out
rows of babies
silent as merchandise.
I followed. I reached
the brink of my intrepid wish,
when I followed them they
were able to let me.
Into the musical staffs of trees,
the forest. I continued
to follow them into the background
hearing my lines clearer
above their throats, women.
Who did not have to do with babies. Women
whose ever was highlighted.
Deposited me
in a tramcar. Following all girls,
I heard my measure:
Nobody road. Following.
I didn’t do anything, I think.
I closed the under I slipped
inside her footsteps and
a tree glazed over me.

Let Me Walk to the End of the Party

Let me walk to the end of the party
Let me stand on the pier overlooking my face
Let me stand on the sidelines
Let me dream out
From inside the other face taking
The aghast and exhausted
Men to dance with me harmless
They know why I have chosen this
Tall and defunct set of me
Let me pretend to know how to dance
By pretending I am a woman
Let me go all woman beneath a man’s spinning
Let my heart beat out of my purview
Let me surprise myself by being a child of god
And when I simply and hungrily along
The path of my own shape
Slide forward let me be standing beside myself watching
Let me mistake affection for chosenness
Let me recognize the rational
Procedure of affection
Let me accept the dance as both
House for our closeness and display of self
Let the dance and the dress I wear replace me
Let the dress speak for me and expend me
Let my business speak for me
Let me keep my head and reschedule my hair
Let the concept come to fruition
Let me pivot my bones into a flock of birds
Let my head fly open and emit the flock

Rachel Hinton’s debut poetry collection, Hospice Plastics, won the Cowles Poetry Prize and was published by Southeast Missouri State University Press in October 2021. Rachel's poems have previously appeared in The Boiler, Cimarron Review, Midway Journal, The Hunger, Salamander, and other journals.