THE BOAT WAS A THOUGHT THE RIVER WAS HAVING
Words I have evacuated from my mouth: ginger, chokehold, June
To decipher, to “make out”—to hold
the body to language
like a slide to light
The erotics of seeing
or the rotted image pruned from the mind
thus “nipping the bud” the work (worth)
of repression
In a different life the patio holds
our conversation about the dead child
The beer a bassinet in which we rock
Stray hair stray bullet stray cat
Unsturdy—a day in which
one feels herself an understudy
in her own life
It was the photo of you
using ginger root as antlers
or the shyness with which we spoke
in a line for a familiar bathroom—
to be the precipice knowing looks over
before backing away
I want to hold this memory down
by the neck
We remain uneven
A plot in a genre that doesn’t prioritize plot
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