Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Eighteen
Winter 2008
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Sibylla
Margaret Bashaar

My lines are all broken and I do not
look her in the eye when she is 80 miles away,
all Manhattans – straight rye whiskey with a cherry,
she travels beneath my skin.

Ground into the heel of my palm,
she is apple-sweet and I think
I will grow fields of strawberries
on my roof and in my back yard,
feed them two her two at a time,
still warm from the sun,
imagine she's kissed me,
tasting of ash.

She says, I don't need to cast stones
to tell you the future,
and her eyes are on the city in the distance,
on one of the boys she has left
to breathe open-mouthed and sleep with a dictionary.

But I will not be the earth
she plants herself in, toes white and long,
reaching to tangle in my lungs
like a forest. I cup her
in my hands, I weave her prophecies
into my hair.

About Margaret Bashaar

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