First Lines for Five Photos

I

eating is taking in and I want that but backward

my hand snails a pear inside me soft and perverse

little bird I see your spine

I am divided in thirds like the suns

kiss me while I remember

II

the world is only mornings

I have grown children in me like hard dark apples

lace me with waxy apple skins manure musical rest

a tree will make a child and a tree will eat forever

I am more at home as a collection of objects

III

I will make bacon of my skin in the sun  

I will treat myself to myself

in the dark press of the deep sea a cherry (huge as the earth)

I have always split myself to wicker twine

smell from the bottom up smell weedy jam

IV

god made me a cow god make me a piece of cash

his speech grew wet and fat like sick cherries

wrap me up and bag me jesus

I built a house of cherry pits and paper

cardboard will dye white like pigeon eyes

E. Jesse Capobianco is a poet and doctoral student in Poetics at SUNY Buffalo. Ze has received graduate degrees from the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven and George Mason University’s MFA, where ze completed theses on poetic epistemologies and hypnotic hermeneutics, respectively. Hir poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Cordite Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, Antiphony, Scud, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and elsewhere. Jesse splits time between Buffalo and Brussels.