April Goldman

I didn’t know then that fucking like Hell

was made of concentric circles. I have since been thinking, feeling, about him from

inside those circles.

I am prone to obsession, but what tears me apart also keeps me going.

My friend doesn’t eat in front of windows, especially ones lit at night. She feels transparent, translucent as a thin-skinned gecko.

Meanwhile, I cry fruitfully and publicly. At a stoplight, a woman in the next car smiles sympathetically and waves.

O vowels tumbling, it’s hard to remember what is me: common vetch, nervous mango tree.

In the space between my mind and body, a great lake shimmers. I’m pointing at that lake, I’m wading

in in a full set of clothes.

O a word that has drifted downstream of any meaning at all can still snag in your mouth like a reed.

                        Like a low whistle through rosettes of barrel cactus.

I feel like a sheet of recycled paper. I feel like the hot hood

of a truck. I feel like a great lake,

disappearing into a blurry horizon.

Didn’t I grow out of him like wine caps or wood ear? Whether I deserved it or not, I wanted to live.

Like a lake in late Autumn when ice is forming, I crack and glisten. I chose adamance over peace,

so make my way lop-sided through the world.

When we kissed the asters and oak trees kept us. I knew this was the heart of my life, an organ more central than the brain.

The air between us tasted like apples. We remembered each other for a moment.

I wasn’t afraid to hang like a breath in his ear.