And now there’s this aftermath. Finished with
reservation. Intentions crystalline and finite.
Flattened in the feelings department.
Wet like the ground of the beer tent.
Jumped on like balloons with quarters in them.
Wet like it’s much, much too late for that angle
to dry it. Dyed the fresh ventricle red.
Proximal as if proximity’s meaningless.
Shoulders brushing, descending stairs
actually, actually done, inhabiting done,
buzzing the hope strings of done. Crumbled
once the sun rises on it. In the rhythm of heels
coming down on it. In the crunch of what’s left
in the corners of it. Staining the tongue
to the nodes of it. Waiting to light the next
smoke of it. Wet like the bus shelter floor
of it. In the grit and the groan of the wake
of it. Shoulders now riding the pine of it.
The breath, sugar, smoke, and the no of it.
Two buses pull up to dispose of it.
♦
Laurie D. Graham is the publisher of Brick magazine and the author of two books of poetry, Settler Education (McClelland & Stewart, 2016) and Rove (Hagios Press, 2013). She comes from outside Edmonton and now lives in Kitchener.
♦♦♦
Up Next:
“The whole world no longer fills a little box.”
The Litter I See Project 