cartography
gesture your hand as it floats
above me scorched slowly, the sacrifice
of an idea the long term
transfer of emotion a skylark
skims the surface of a cloud
they sing only in flight grounded
the air echoes their silence
a meadow, a wheat field, a figure waiting
I drift toward you and then away eddying
when leaves collect I measure the length
of our silences mute we circle one another
cradling the space between us
later we map angles
chart the distance from the sky
to ours heads brush away tufts of grass
clear space for new territory listen
again to larks in flight
bright song against sky
not so close
this region of your body
hip edge and hollow
an echo of a place
we haven’t even
begun to see
let petal thought
arrange itself across
your face and find
words for the mixture
of sea salt and habit
that have formed
and in separation
what happens to the pair
of gulls?
as the rain refuses to fall
from overcast sky, I cup
the memory of you
in my hands
even damaged I recall
the collection of your thoughts
your eyes as they gazed
through me
I watch the sky unfold
catch the scattered
birds before dusk sets in
over this backlit evening
Peach Halves
I’ve dried you out
your body has become
a series of peach halves
you disappear at the end
of the sentence
I’ve deconstructed
the underpinnings
of our hesitancy to forgive
a prune and two cracked
lemon peels keep you
company in the kitchen
when you are restless
I hear wind from the window
whistle across your ridges—
a sing-song melody we
used to dance against
a knife and stale bread
withered fruit all tokens
of this intractable
currency of lies
you have spoken it all
anew
blank space on a page
squeezes imagination asks for forgiveness in advance
spells out clemency before words begin to clutter
each factory output each mass produced idea each one of us
trying to unearth
our carapace of a soul
rough surface plank of pine sand away the impurities
an idea wrought with anxiety blooms into a tulip a clever notion
those full petals fall to the damp earth
juniper, long grass, an elliptical brush of the wind of the images we craft
parallel lines a prism of lilac a drunk absence looming
before time elapses and we become ordinary again how to remove
the stains of rust or an idea turned sour
an incomplete invasion a restless poem
not again
the curve of the leaf
mimics the curve
of your fingers tight
around my neck
the sky is blue, but
icy—it won’t hide me
I divide each moment
across myself
*
don’t milk sound
for sweets
don’t drag my body
over and over again
wait each tinge of pink wait
cloud wait sky wait water
wait the leafy foliage
that engulfs
*
I draw back exposed
nestle against the wall
if cut and shaved and broken
begins here then what
the deer less like scared cows
than curtains of damage
those lunging bodies
Lucy Burns received an MFA in Poetry at the University of New Mexico where she served as the Associate Editor for Blue Mesa Review. She is currently the Associate Editor for Narrative Magazine.
