ISSUE 11

David Sullivan

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Broken/Open​

 

                      —starting with a line from Jack Gilbert

 

When we stop long enough,

something lost in us can be heard

singing:

               apple in hand, our teeth

having gouged through the skin,

feels foreign,

                        or we turn off

the radio at the stoplight to listen

to the insect trapped inside tick

against glass,

                        or we half-wake, un-

tangling dream messaging, or

we decline to lever up the shovel

we’ve sunk into loam, or enter

the forest & have it enter us,

like forgotten statuary

                                           we listen,

past blood-throb at the temples,

past lungs' dull ache, into all our

childhoods, into flesh pressed

into flesh before words coalesced

into sense,

                    & the broken angel

lodged between our ribs croons

so softly we joy-cry without tears,

fearing noise will stop it,

                                              like

when we freeze & slow-drop

to our knees in after-fire forest ash

while the buck’s head swivels

our way,

                the song of its breath

pluming up, briefly clouding

those unblinking, alien eyes.

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