Published just now in The Round: the literary journal of Brown University

I’VE FOUND HER LOST AGAIN IN ME

In the dusky, damp hour of summer when wine

is poured and in the distance neighbors

bicker over their barbecue, the husband saying

it’s not his job to clean it and clattering

the domed lid over

five pounds of grade A beef.

The wisteria, desperately holding itself open

to possibility, and the dogs roam barking, their

tongues sloppy with grass. The birds, repeaters,

warble from tree to tree, trying to vary their story,

back and forth, back and forth, so bored with each other.

In the yard a pool filled with azure water, an aquarium of

tears, piss, semen, a pure rectangle, a holding pond of life,

there, lying on the surface, on the great,

pink, plasticized, inflatable swan floating unguarded,

there’s a girl. She could be 19 or 70. She’s listening to

the opera of summer, writing a bird libretto, her fingers

holding the minute hand on the clock of time, suspended

by the undercurrent of oboe, she knows she’s different.

She feels every rhythm.