by Lauren Camp

All around, the heat–wringing.

When D told me his prostate was like Minute Steak,
so much detail left white that he lowered his eyes.

The summer I left K’s house provoked by the great body of thought.

Or when P hid under his roof as his lung collapsed.

How it started was that Mom would he calling tonight at 7.
How it ended is that she won’t.

There was so much to say.

by Lauren Camp

The hours between York and Kennebunk, between
                          Boston and Salem, and too

between Danvers and Logan

thin words perch:   lost   close   coax   worn

The sun is relentless.
The day’s elastic wears out

and blue haze granulates.
There isn’t a gate
                           or a fence at that corner
and now I’m watching my father watching

a kite on the beach
where the Atlantic cashes

                                       into the stones.
              I will only forget what I want

to remember;
the hair on his chin and the slight hook

of his nose, his eyes most
                                      alive as they reach the sky.

by Lauren Camp

I am granted every fork,
every chair, every blossom,
the lantern and saffron, escape
or alliance. It’s an agreement I made:
to spell the spare creaks, to carry
many books and not anyone else.
Hard work to stretch to the spines,
to rattle out commas. To become the woman
who nibbles on bacon and sits]
where light swings to lift out
each line, putting a final yes
at the bottom. I wanted a bathtub,
but I am paraphrasing the particular
into what I would not use.
All I really needed were clauses
and some evenings, I walk
to the plaza where burred people
dance. Much has been offered.
Pink lands on umber.
Extravagant light hollers into my silence.
I am hiding in public with my definition
of the spectrum of stars
arranged exactly as frames
for my pictures. And again, when I can,
my body in the thicket
of upholstery, only rising for corn cakes
and scones. I spend more hours
by the abiding lamp, black pen
in hand. I always intend a stop
to absorption. Room to room,
the seclusion is mercy.
The skin of my husband is distant.
Every night is desire
for summer grasses. After a while,
I find less in first times. Again,
the next day, I lift myself out
of the red heart in the corner near the low–
lying windows, and announce
to the flowers nothing is wrong.
I’m looking for quiver, and will accept
only a corolla of words. They open their faces,
unblinking. I cling to their attention.

by Wren Tuatha

I told you then I would take it out back
and kill it with a knife. But I couldn’t do it.
You stumbled upon my love today as then.

It’s a folding chair, forgotten in the woods,
rusting beside living oaks and rotting, jutting stumps,
unsuitable seats. Your mind tries to pick up its stories
from the air around. A picnicker, a hunter, absent minded
yogi. But stories are noise, excuses. Mute air transmits
this year’s bird noise, same as the moment before
and the moment after this chair was left here.

You realize the years, four legs grounded through
snow mounding and hurricanes, the inflating
and shriveling of mushrooms. Fox and mouse,
mouse and beetle, squirrel and squirrel.
Food and urges and panic. I remember loving you.
There was noise.

Mute, awake air, used to being taken in and released,
doesn’t suffer seasons or fools, doesn’t root for predator
or prey, doesn’t pray that you find your own heart
among curly, restless ferns. I still do.