banger

have you ever
gotten a body
stuck in your head
like a song?
breaking through
mental calculations,
humming
while you’re in front of other bodies.
like
in the middle of the laundry
here comes
the curve
where chest meets arm
flushed and damp.
the glissando
of a leg extended
impossibly high
over a head
thrown back in joy.
the sax solo
of unexpectedly feminine
collarbones.
a hip bone
the hook,
a ribcage
the chorus,
returning to you
as it revolves
for another listen,
another look.

intransitive

some verbs
are intransitive.
this means
they take no object.
they are incapable
of possession, of theft.
they simply
swim, laugh, arrive, belong.

slip

the smell of gasoline,
aerosolized by lake waves.
a knot of pontoons
crowding a damp and bobbing dock.
my five-year-old cousin
slips from her mother’s hands
into the narrow gap
between dock and boat.
her tiny body just slips.
gasoline
somehow in the air
that sputters out of her lungs
when we finally grasp her.
the air on fire
with what could have happened.

—

Elizabeth Galoozis’s poems have appeared in Air/Light, Sundog Lit, RHINO Poetry, Call Me [Brackets], Sinister Wisdom, and elsewhere. She works as a librarian and lives in southern California. Elizabeth can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @thisamericanliz.

Photography by: Verne Ho