Judith Even When Sleeping Part III
A brief sketch of the things that (during the seconds that her blonde hair flashed against the darkness) welled up inside of me or came at me from the outside: A flannel sleeping bag, its smooth vinyl outer skin, the smell of my leather jacket under my head, the cheap shag carpet of the floor, the hard cold wood underneath that floor, how things stack upon each other almost indefinitely, the density of the winter outside, her nearness to me and her distance to me being the same, the cotton throughout the room, the glow of moonlight off snow seeping into the window like fog, the anxiety dripping from her heart and drowning out her voice, the anxiety pulling up from my gut quieting my breath, the specific language between lovers, the childish play, the spreading out and thinning of the heart into the limbs, the satisfaction of sharing without revealing.
Alchemy
You must remember
there is a pair to almost everything.
The soft coal pupils, the chambers of the heart,
the wild limbs, the teeth and all their brothers
the fingers, the toes, the hidden bundles of sinew
now, more like strings than cables.
I don't have the memory for the maddening miracles.
I got your hair right.
Saying its phrase over and over,
“She drops her copper into my lungs.”
I lost your eyes,
your freckles, and myself,
having nothing real to cling to
sunk through your bones
into the dirt, turned to clay.
Your lips, misplaced
along with a map of the West Coast,
showing in the color of blood
routes into the sea.
Josh received his M.F.A from Portland State University and currently lives and works in Eugene, OR. In addition to writing poetry Josh has been known to look after three cats at once, attempt his own book binding, and is currently working on his first full length manuscript.