Lana Rakhman

IN A HURRY
 
the halt of air and alkaloids
strum your shoulders into existence
 
while you mine the core of nothing,
talking to yourself in an empty
 
field, but look - listening is not
the same as breathing, not one
 
less or one more but all gone
and all there.
 
absolutes cannot be cured –
carry this skin that slowly
 
peels away like the black dahlia,
the black widow, only to find
 
that white is a dangerous color.
map sentences to resemble
 
highways. walk only in-between
the world and the earth, palm
 
to chest, exclaiming I can see
all the ugly and the symmetry
 

Précis
 
I.
           
Without a lid you’re at the bottom – a trick of the eye canceled, with legs that do not fit their bones. Pain is small and narrow.
 
II.

Cobblestone roads reconstructed to save the sound of trotting horse shoes. At last – brick sidewalks. But this time, save a name. Rush through crowds, minus shoes.
 
III.

Do not buy people’s shoes. They are uneven wounds, like magic: so many times and never zero.

IV.

The forest: a comparison: trees in Iceland: children of winter have cold games and feet. Even though we’ve lost a small bag with gloves, the right words will come. We’re lost in ice, in playing without pockets, outside time.
 

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Psychic Meatloaf Poetry Journal