Coda for N
In mid-Sunday
chameleon hours you wrung
linens over the tub and hung them
like a picture, or a suddenness.
We spoke of London and
their foxes common as finches,
and I asked how distance
lodged itself in you; how it’s
possible for one to measure oceans
in spools of thread. You leaned to
steep a sock in soap water, a dilemma
of lavender foaming over and onto
the floor, the notes of your
spine many-knotted fists lining
an oar. The short sum
of distance: somewhere
a paper boat cast away
by a faucet, somewhere a child’s
balloon not where she left it,
and how I’ll know you were here
is the dresser heavy with gold rings,
the peach pits on the laminate.
phone call
place me now
in the softest groove
between your cradled
phone and ear,
clavicle a hammock.
push vegetables
around a pan using
fingertips to shift
my voice to the left
for fear of bruising.
later we can fix the
summer with the breeze
of our leaving, heels
pressing then heaving
sand behind us.
place me in the ivy
glow through paper
blinds, the hum of
a fan. how a white
strap slipping from a
woman’s shoulder in
the park as she picks
up her child can
recirculate the air.
the ensorcelled
panic of feeling
moved, the furious
soft of your cotton
back weighting
into mine—
place us now
in the amber of it.
JACKIE is a Brooklyn based writer, the Executive Assistant for The Poetry Society of New York, and the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Milk Press. Her work has appeared in The Minnesota Review, Waccamaw: a journal of contemporary literature, The Nottingham Review, Vagabond City Literary Journal, and elsewhere. She was also awarded Poem of the Month by Brooklyn Poets for her piece “Paper Hat” in 2016.
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