AUSTERITY

Two dogs slip beneath the fence and the third
is left there standing. She walks along the fence and cries
and this is the very essence of crying: to cry down the street,
all the way down the street—

*

So the world is a system of surfaces
over which sound moves in waves.
The waves break here and elsewhere.
When Laura said “Laura, fall in love with reality”

she was learning to stand
at the appropriate distance.
It was that kind of willed surrender
in which the words got in the way.

*

Moments empty into hours
as hours are the way time moves.
Sharp bones, farmland, peacocks, rain.
Tell X I liked his music.

Tell X I made sense sameness.
Tell X
I turned out bad.

I did nothing but watch
days move in summer:
when you leave one world
you start another.

*

“I like the ones that die in gold,”
X told me, on the beach.
X was small then, microscopic.

“I would’ve liked if you’d have stay awhile,”
is the start of every song,
and the song goes on forever,
as is the essence of the song.

*

That a poem should leave you
with the oddly pleasurable sensation
of having been left is a thing I remember
learning from school.

I pushed X down in the yard and ran.
I wore my hair long. I swam in rivers
carved from stone, pure adoration.
Watched them shrink and cease and dry.

Then I was waiting, then I was alone
inside a pain so small and glove-like
I could tell no one about it.

--

from Issue 11 of Annulet

Read more here

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By Mary Helen Callier 👍