Scout Faller

INHERENT PROPERTIES 

candles, inside, are full of bathwater 

being inside there are various moods and papers 

inside each pantry are ant traps inside traps a seduction 

inside seduction there is a compulsion 

inside of compulsion, history and some reasons 

inside reasons, bits of kindling 

inside kindling the promise of char in your hair 

inside each promise, a gesture to alternatives 

inside alternatives consumptive habits 

inside the mall, a store with your skirt 

inside the skirt a prettier person with a poet’s face 

inside the jacquard print two owl eyes 

inside each eye the meanest moon we have in writing 

the moon can’t even be seen, she’s so mean.  

what hangs in her place is a child’s 

drawing thumbtacked to the sky. inside each child their 

blinkered light with its three settings inside each child, all the 

holidays that end in cake inside each cake four  

hands that shape the butter  

into its rectangular prism

CRY ME A RIVER 

we don’t smoke anymore do we? 

gone the california way and chased 

ourselves around with leafy greens 

indulging in the agreed- 

upon things blue dawn rising  

stuck stars in concrete 

basil cumin french jeans 

lights swim across your face 

in defiance of the fog,  

or the waves 

the miserably recurring line items 

rent days work days days long days 

i guess i should speak for myself  

i try on a feeling 

it makes me want to scrape  

the hair out of my rug and  

shove my hands down the drain  

i don’t have 

time for you  

to break me  

down again, 

or emerge from the sea  

boring  

wetsuit aphrodite

HOW MY NAME GOES DOWN IN 2018

yeah no my parents love to kill a  

mockingbird, my father with mild dyslexia 

and my mother who reads murder mysteries 

with recipes at the end, absolutely i saw the aaron  

sorkin play on broadway three thousand 

miles from where you’re asking me, a cashier 

making minimum wage yes the performance 

of the forty-four year old woman playing an eight 

year old deserved a tony. i agree! an important book 

reminding white ppl of the qualities we 

like best in ourselves my dad is the furthest  

thing from atticus, thanks for asking—he’s never stood up for 

anything but his right to bring a knife on a plane— 

without a question in his mind. your receipt?

HOW I ANSWER THE PHONE BANK CALL 

my horse is a good day when  

our children get on all fours and run home 

for the dinner-bell ringing it i’m a senator’s  

wife and i shoot out the dawn they sewed me  

into this dress for the election what  

happens is you slip your gloved hands  

inside pressed against your chest like  

some leatherette marsupial pouch and  

they disappear, stylishly and you become  

a flat image that is pulled up next to another  

flatter image with a vertical line dividing  

them and the text asks who wore it better  

it is whoever held themselves in a way  

that suggests their arms are really gone 

from the front or the side a cutout  

of shoulder slicing through— 

this is very flattering, but only if you are  

married to a senator as i am and so truly  

unconcerned with electoral politics except  

that wherever i am not holding his hand 

there they are but not pressing buttons  

at the tuesday night at the phone bank just  

standing dressy handless my four children  

who make up one horse arrive on time are not  

in the voting line for we’ve already won

Scout (they/them) has poetry in cc zine and cul-de-sac of blood, and poems forthcoming in rejection letters and bullshit lit. They live in the outer sunset neighborhood of San Francisco with their partner and their cat. They hope you think of them, often. You can find them on instagram at @_theminem__.