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We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
Winner of the 2009 Discovery Poetry Contest.
In this last, clear-cut story, you are tree, I am
Wind shaking, you scuttling through spring
Sphere. We are water, I am current, you are—
I open my eyes and I am on the wharf, grey
Clouds roiling by in a mixer of slate-
Colored sky, I am shaking. You are crab, we are
Water in large percentages. You could be
Home, or wherever we find ourselves sleeping,
Together at the shore. Did you watch close
Or did you come home to find the lone poppy
Already blossomed in a bottle, petals just ready to
Or already dropping, one by one. They keep
Occurring to me and I have not found a way.
I stop it. The smells are of organic rotting, people
Holding in their hands tangled nets, walk away
Hidden by skin-colored sand. I have been crueler
To my own already. You are eyes shut when or if
And I want you to see the formation of gulls or
This world without me in it, whatever you find most
Beautiful, I want to cut you loose, out of me, bury
Us in a bottle for you to find later, always keep.
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