By Nancy Kang
Published in 16.4
Coast: July
I press a finger at the fading pulse
of your indifference a stalk entwined with veined tendrils,
the swell of globed thoughts pungent as crushed garlic
little bellies, each of those cloves,
a green toe nudging there, a tiny tail embryonic,
blister-urgent moisture in a nest of browned roots
as white as the top of a green onion or the roots of your hair
These fire-flowers that alight the sky each year, the
communion girls laughing the sprinkler jets with
the barking yellow dog that ruts the hard spray of water
smiles like a dying fish flushed pink, fading grey.
I never stopped looking
for the old places that skittered across those deep trenches and brown arms
like water-striders on a stream in sunshine somewhere
their pinprick legs suturing memory’s open mouth
but leaving no scars that dissolve in a week or two.
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