Tag: isolation
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Obscene
Obscene emerged from a moment of enforced solitude in a room I did not choose but had to occupy. I tried to honor its silence, but my breath—wet, rhythmic, insistent—kept happening. It wasn’t mine. It wasn’t anyone’s. It was a fact, and it offended. I realized then that breath, stripped of metaphor, is a kind…
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Baptism on a Sunday Race Day in Daytona
It wasn’t a river just a pool,more of a hotub,set off from the sanctuary—and when I was eased into the waterI didn’t see God in the streams above.And I didn’t see her lost in the thunder of the racetrack just beyond the church. She was beyondmy line of sight,soaking up congratulations from the congregation.The pastor…
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Wrack Line
I stay behind the wrack line, alone and ancient,only knowing the stillness my wounded feet allow. A Laughing Gull is revering the border left by the tide.Pass, the mate, thumbs its long bill through the leavings:dried kelp stripped of Brittle Stars, bottle caps, broken glass becoming now fine and deadly sand, mangrove twigs, unstraightened, eaten…
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Walking the Dead Beach
1The beach evaporates into the clouds and on sandsbeyond hourglasses, I walk—under a dry and empty sky,a blue that doesn’t exist, a white that has died inside.The dark and light hereare not things. The beach is a negative of souls. I try to imagine a life before the dry,perhaps a lover,someone besides me,to sleep in…
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Chop Suey
(Ekphrasis on the Edward Hopper painting.)In the white tablespace between themshe thinks only of theodds and ends danglinginside. The hissing tea kettlehushes the words in front, the love chatbehind.Note: choppy suey comes from the Chinese tsap sui for “odds and ends”.