Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Eighteen
Winter 2008
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Last Sight of Aris Holding My Postcard of Christina’s World
Aaron Patrick Flanagan

Scraggly paper birches left off southeast corner,
horseflies pause and zip between edges of barn roof lacunas like codas
recoil off teeth. I watched them,
hands around a shovel handle knowing
that, like my ribcage, they can’t contain anything wet anymore. I see
this now. No matter this barn was put together with tobacco spit,


because tonight as each night,
I curl up inside you, inside our barn,
how some words ask
to lay inside others       sleeper, milk, river
Then as mornings gone past, when I sit up to cough,
the morning doves and sparrows dozing in the hayloft
flap clumsily, like wet burlap clung onto by clothespins,
before they storm up through the roof as steam
like snow crumbles and wets my hands.

About Aaron Patrick Flanagan

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