MARY ROSE MANSPEAKER


                                     



I CANNOT LIVE INSIDE THIS POEM




—Dandelions bloomed yellow, stars
mirrored on a lake's surface—Nothing
survives; descriptions lay them out curiously

& here my museum; I have ideas
largely untested. Such is
the moment: passed.

After a long day, I place the fallen leaves
alongside the calls of friends clogging the streets.
A world's selected testimonial,
this loveliness well-trodden

year by year; faces forced into the light
& fading. I've always been partial
to the tenderness: quiet

moments pressed into a quiet novel.
We all know the dead, all clutch
their lockets to our throats.

We imagine the faces how we like, we imagine
them like us. Captured & recorded;
in a flurried motion

I step through the snow in shorts,
into the drug store. The clerk decides I must
have been running, to be so welcoming to cold. I say
yes. There are so many moments

the truth doesn't matter. In this new city,
a door swings closed behind me & you
look up. Smile slightly. I shake my head,

so full of moments to lay alongside
this one. The moment
I secure them, I reach
to rip their faces from the frame.






TYPO 33