Wives box a wax bike. Inside, there’s an x-ray of an x-ray.
Category: real rough
August, Lancaster City.
Recall a rainstorm. Water pools on a porch, seeps into termite trenches where you’ll find them, huddled in the subtlety of drops forming. Here, paint peels, sticks to callouses, and washes down drains.
We dance
in the garden between impatiens and an ash tray. Sun shines down, reflects from your collarbones. I turn raspberries from white to red. Sun flashes off the birdbath. Now, 1 hour later, we dance between concrete and thyme. Breeze churns clouds, turbulent and you dance into rain.
After a night of drinking in amarillo
headlights reach, refract through dual panes of glass. the train siren sings, draws me home.
First week
The train trails time, ebbs as I lie awake, staring at glowing stars stuck to the ceiling by the last tenant. Sounds call out and I’m out of nouns. It rends sky from Juniper. Disrupts quotidian life. a resplendent- ness leaves you staggering.
Walking around with jess in March
In the tree- box on Lemon Street, dog shit and a Duracell battery rest together. Cradled, by roots.
It aint easy strangling helpless neonates
Lilith lives down the block with the man who collects aluminum cans on Monday nights.
.
Under an air- conditioner’s sweaty exhaust, they have him on the cement, in hand cuffs.
I had the feeling I’ve been
here before. But I wasn’t in this body. Back when i skinned my knees and got welts the size of softballs from mosquitos. i still get welts from mosquitos. but they don’t feel the same. This hair isn’t mine and whose dress is this? You brought me here, i remember. Hiked 12 miles around the […]
Elk Song
We carved pictures into the cave- walls, and sang songs with words never used. Words, no longer there, Never there. And we rode our bikes 13.5 miles just to hear the elk bleat again. Singing songs to lovers in a language we didn’t understand.
Amy Pajewski 