2 Poems

By Sam Robinson

Enmity is amity

When you call your lover
your partner you castrate

Eros— so disrespectful to
what precedes everything

else— so Nature is made
by passionate strife resulting

in winners and losers and
everything in between

despite there being no
space between us

close as we are to be one
I’m basically inside you

Who won? You won? I won

Sokushinbutsu

Found mummified sitting
at the base of a yew tree
holding a message saying

“HAVE NO FEAR”

w/ this minor addendum attached

“Sensation to the point of the overwhelming pain
pushed— Clarity and serenity— it hurts— god
it hurts— why are you afraid of the full moon
descending to your open eyes and gaping mouth?
Have you tried being more detached? Have you tried
passing your thoughts through a white room entering
left and leaving rightward? Have you tried meditation?
It doesn’t work for me and doesn’t
have to because I hold on to nothing but you
seem to have a big problem with holding
on to things— quiet your mind that makes those things—
this being an order and not a suggestion”

Sam Robinson is a writer from Massachusetts whose poetry has appeared in Blue Arrangements, Spectra, No More Prostitutes and elsewhere. He is the author of a chapbook, New Age Self Help (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and can be found on instagram @baldsinatra.