I roll the last three peaches beneath my hands,
testing them for water. Watercolor fuzz tickles,
curls away beneath the paring knife. Here
I find the peach pit clinging
like an unready soul
to its flesh, wishing to bring along
riches stored in fibers.
There is another, floating free
within its body. A curve of steel
reaches the center and the pit rolls out,
cordial and without complaint. It is ready.
My hand curls around the very last, blade
easing through softness. My fingers find—
when the fruit is cut away—a third stone
cleaved in two. I think it saw the world
from within its cocoon.
The shock split it clean.
– Teresa Morse
Author’s Note: I find that my poetry tends to land me in small places, allowing me to dignify the unseen or rarely seen.…
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from the patio, my body
twinges, your hands pressed to the glass
of the sliding door, our marriage much like this
when you see the minor injury that will take me
many weeks to overcome, the irritation more
than the pain, and I see it
in your eyes, the injury that will take us
away from ourselves, the way the glass door
keeps us apart, the way the leaves are drained
from the wheelbarrow into the empty field not far enough
from the house to stop the wind from spilling them back
into our lives like the tissue that grows, both ornamental
and necessary, over wounds.
– David Swerdlow…
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The sirens scream, and I am drowned
by Los Angeles memories—
a flood of people
hunters, prowling rapists,
drive-by babies
bleeding in cradles,
kids hop-scotching Hollywood
stars, barbed-wire high schools
with penitentiary views,
mothers sleeping
under overpasses, drinking
freeway smog while the night
halo rises. I sink down below
into the pass, the canyon, the valley,
as tumbleweeds snag
on marooned car hulls
and bonfire piers are whipped
by Devil Winds.
There is no river here, I remind myself,
no reason to fear cavitation,
no crossing boatman,
only a cemented trickle
tattooed by graffiti bridges,
turbines stealing snowmelt, pushing
it over snared bodies. Only time locks
dribbling out showers, dams anchoring
drinking fountains. The Queen
of the Angels may mourn
the Tujunga watershed
and Santa Ana sucker,
but I fear a storm
on the mountain, drowning
in a shimmering current
backwater that screams my name.…
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The gathering of flesh tightly against itself,
the beginning of a seam.
When I was a child
I went for a walk in the woods—
the mountain laurel blossoms lit up the bushes
like the kitschy lights of a 1970’s Christmas tree. I cut my arm open
falling off that old wooden zipline there, the one with the red painted seat
and the wooden handlebars, the one that severed the mountains
in half. The branches cut my skin
to lace. There was not
a single binding stitch
on my skull after the surgeon mended my brain, threads
seal the inside from the out, and instead the surgery
was done through my thigh. During a rupture, blood
seeps through the mind like ink across a wet page. …
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I visited some fish
in a manmade pond each
a swimming body a mouth
opening and closing a tail
steering the muscle of self
through shallow waters
One small white fish leaped up
twice into air then vanished
back under
Two narrow yellow fish
hiding within a rocky shelter darted out
for brief glimpses
The whole dark surface aswim
with purple blue orange
speckled contrasting bodies rippled
at my feet reflecting light churned
by the fish…
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Lumped even before the liftoff my prayers take their bonnets off and bang their sketchy heads against the mirror. You’ve come here alone, you will die here alone.
Here alone—but I believe in heaven. Remain in love with him who finds no door out of drowning. Wait in the entrance of a cinema to watch nothing, with no one.
At 10 AM I remind a child crossing the snow-eaten street to hold the hand of his dead mother a breath-shaped figure with the trouble of being still walking beside him.
In the afternoon, a police operation leaves a dead dog behind. Bullet-twirled. A levitation. Only by looking at it I can tell the dog is no longer a dog so I take that thing that is not itself home the way you would put an exigent newborn back the distant crib, and then back the dream.…
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Let wind music carry you in what direction it chooses,
whispering its howl against stung ears.
From behind, white streaks by at peripherals
as though you’re travelling backward through a starfield.
Feel your hair glossed by highlights, damp, &
fresh melt grooving your cheeks where tears might rest.
Take this tranquil journey in a.m. dark,
if only a few feet to fetch the paper.
Pause. Now, look up at the arc lamp
where you’ll see it best: tickertape for your brief parade,
loose confetti, a dazzling haze of glitter.
You can take both calm & chaos with you
indoors to observe through a window
as the verdant flaming undergrowth disappears.
– Ace Boggess…
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