Poetry
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.
I could tell from his voice / something was horribly wrong. / I’m okay he said over and over / in a tone that told me he was anything but.
A trickster, the ear. Making us believe/
what eyes deny or hearts might doubt,