Poetry
The high sweep of waves, like the bulging arc
of a grand piano, and the silence of deer in a field of
lupine and trefoil, and the underthrum
Take this, take it with crackers or bread. Do not. Do not. Do not
chew or crush. You are pregnant, may become pregnant, or are
breast-feeding.
What my eyes see reminds me of under-exposed / negatives from my bygone wet photography days, / days replete with eyes—the camera’s, the enlarger’s, mine—
For months, her determined hands
/ coaxed the sickness up and out of my lungs / until it came to rest, eventually, in her own—
I’m angrily packing to fly to my dying brother. / My husband stands and watches. As a tree / might look at someone, he looks down at me.
I wanted you, desert / you red incorruptible // parchedness perched on / the earth’s bone shoulder
It is four in the darkness and you cannot breathe. / You cannot will your chest to expand, and suddenly, / this is all right.
We lean close to admire the web / then blow on it // gently.
He has started praying – / my mother says, clenching in her hands / a blurry set of pixels.