ISSUE 13

Melanie Perish

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A Closer Look

After Bob Kaufman

I could die with a limp,
bleeding gums, a prayer
near a counter-spill shaped
like the Virgin of Guadalupe.

I could die of hives
with a phone that tells time
or shot on a city corner,
in the gut or not,
a middle-aged man in Armani feeling
for a carotid pulse with two fingers.
Nothing, he says.
See me there?
My battle born face gone gray,
my lips blue in silent civil war,
ICE agents on the street near Our Lady
of Perpetual Sorrow.

I could die now:
woman with scalpel and femoral artery.
Awake to the body’s collage
of synapse, cartilage, bone.
I live sea and beach, creek
and tree crowns, sagebrush and ash.

My heart is in sync
with riffs and rivers.
Now it is jazz. Now it is
rain. Now it is free
verse​

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