Hot enough for even crows to go missing.
………..I’ve been digging in shadeless afternoons,
………..giving him odds and ends. The wasp in a fig.
Mollusks in shells. Lightbulb filament.
He gathers interiors and finds use but
………..does not sweat and say we can fix this.
………..The kiss at day’s end is a way
to place heirlooms on a high shelf while
ants trickle into midnight dens, envious parade
………..of scent and function and I believe
………..in them at least, electromagnetic love and order
running an empire beneath toes burnt by patio. Again
and again, open windows refuse to cool even in
………..dark hours. No one remembers where the moon
………..hides all day or for how many months
a half-eaten cake in the freezer keeps. …
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I hold my hands up to the sky & wait for lightning to strike me, after all I have been lying
awake at night, stitched into the side of your name like another bruise left on this body that cannot hold itself up any longer
than the night’s coldness in summer which is when I’m writing this as a way to escape the nightmares of you marrying him
in sacrilegious revenge to God’s humor which is to say my arrogance has left me faithless
in the process of healing
//
I looked to the world running wherever the wind would blow me, crashing down in a thunderclap leaving hollowed memories, ghosts I gave names to, associating them with scars I connect together like a map detailing where I’ve been — constellations to guide me towards the shore & out of the sea’s vast loneliness.…
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During the rains, the darkening rains,
I am floating above the flood,
waters beneath me, splashing my back.
The fish see my shoulder blades,
mistake them for wings
because I float in air. But I do not
fly. I travel on the water’s aura,
its color changing with my mood,
while the fish in crowded schools
complain about limited knowledge.
Oval clams stay tight, closed to my shape,
a silhouette against the darkening sky.
They speak in a fishy chorus, rub
scales against each other like blades.
Dark rain pelts my face, cold, stinging.
Black water at my back splashes warm,
inviting me in. But I hover above,
still without wings, stay in-between.
I do not swim or dive or fly.
I float. The only way I know to get by.…
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The third jump wakes the turtle, expatriate of the brackish backwater.
And when no one is watching, the tides – inch by inch,
neither salt nor fresh – erode my half acre. My half-life
spent sideswiping mile markers of gravel and tar
and spinning
spinning elliptically with inflated verve. Summoned
back not just to indentured space, but
slingshot to lace and latticework,
the familiar linens and pillows still holding
our heads’ heat and indented shapes.
All trace evidence,
all reluctant keepsakes.
I am a planet again.
I remember closing time when the cabana boys appeared.
They would gather the sodden towels arch with sifted sand
and roll their rickshaws along the boardwalk. The day ceiling…
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Every sharpening restores a bright edge,
keener for the simple whittle,
honed for the splintered who need repair.
In the mirror of my pristine theater,
I polish patina of my face, redesign
with friction, whet fissures from my skin.
A brain is a many-chambered thing
and recalls each corruption. I seek
a clean heaven, breathe healing air.
I resent ruinous slashes, even when
without injury to slow me, or dull rubs
cleaving my chest. Your malicious
gashes carve me to third person, at bay
with rasping’s sparks. Tuesday grinds
our love’s thousand tides, and you seduce
me into your cave by the sea. I witness
you smear frescoes onto walls,
and accept a frieze onto my flesh.
– Sam Barbee…
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I liked her best when she was puking her guts out, more than once, in a mini dress, can’t remember the color, maybe cream, fall 1998, rural New England, by a big tree, then another, after the dance at which I’m pretty sure she didn’t dance but at which I’m absolutely sure she did a great deal of underage drinking, after which I helped a few guys prop her up, walk her back to her room in the little house for upperclassmen where I put her to bed, where she puked again, all over the spread on her twin bed, which I’m pretty sure I later inherited. I do love a hand-me-down. Vulnerability. Rigid self-appointed authority demoted, somewhat disgusting, disarmed. Then back down the gravel road in the dark, across the little causeway into co-ed Kendrick, down the stairs to the room I shared with a round-faced Ritalin addict who sold drugs out of our mini-fridge.…
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How can someone atone for a sin they cannot name?
It was Yom Kippur. The four of us donned formal wear.
Mom was anxious & had to double-check the locks, making us late.
Dad yelled, cursing the heavens. Our annual ritual—
fasting, & then rushing out to Wendy’s at 4 o’clock to break.
How can someone atone for a sin they cannot name?
Among the crowded, ticketed, gussied-up masses,
we filed into pray, to atone
for our sins. I was 11, obediently taking in
the words of teshuva:
For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonement atones;
but for transgressions of
one human being against another,
the Day of Atonement does not atone
until they have made peace with one another.…
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