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Marianne Boruch

Judith Harris

Through the dark, we say, through the dark: but do we ever really know?

He says to his boots, “Well, suppose we went for fish.”

My father would have ended my clandestine career on the spot.

We crossed the length of Iran to reach a lake so big they called it a sea.

The old hen scratches then looks, scratches then looks. My life.

I bled. God didn’t want to hear about it. He said unclean and so it was.

I walked that land with him, one and mingling, breaking into breath.

This was his sky, his clouds rucked up over the fields. His country.

You’ve gathered more knowledge than you’d need for nine lives.

A ripple across the darker fathom, no sooner there than torn away.

He told me that he knows a parent’s grief for a dead child.

God is there between things, sitting at his own left hand.

Gail Godwin

I wish I could tell him he’s not going to hell. It would be so freeing for him.

He tried to regain that moment of grace, but there was no conjuring it.

What I want is a woman who knows all the meanings of indulgence.

I must be led by what was given to me as streams are led by it

Just give me a small joy, say, the size of a ketchup packet.

You are home in your bed like a soft animal with really intense feelers.

I thought how she must thrash with savage agility when she made love.

Somehow my confession became a sharp knife I kept hidden in a drawer.

The story of Wing Biddlebaum’s hands is worth a book in itself.

Come winter, they go to the funeral early & count the living.

Having held down the past applying pressure to its sacrum . . .

I want to step out into sun to scintillate for waves to come and spray.

He tries to appear slight in his leather jacket and turbulent jeans.

I remember the sun on the mountain like a trembling drop of lava. When the lasso dancers were done, they kicked away like wild colts.

That piece of flesh you’re with is a high school student, a minor.