Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Eighteen Winter 2008 |
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 |