Air-Breathing Life<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sleeping beside you
\nis like sharing the sheets with a fish
\nreeled up on the boat deck
\nthe hook rooted firm
\nin your angry, sweet mouth
\nyou twist and twist circles, spirals,
\nyour tail flaps and beats,
\nslap, slap, slapping
\non the wooden planks
\nI dodge your sharp scaly sides
\nand wonder are you remembering a time
\nwhen salt was your world
\nand you didn\u2019t want change,
\nbut gasped
\nsome strange new element.
\nI reach my calf around you,
\nan arm slid in your fin
\nand wait
\nwhile you adjust
\nto this air, this life
\nof yours with me.<\/p>\n

On the Road North<\/strong><\/p>\n

Winding up the mountain on Route 2 on my way to pick up my son at the police station at 3 a.m., held in protective custody from himself, the car moved along the unmarked road, and from the corner of my eye in a far-off field, I saw a deer\u2014young, lithe, moving with that grace deer have\u2014she stopped, head tilted up, looked my way, I thought maybe our eyes had met, moving the way each of us do, now, tonight without question or thought, in the silence that holds the roar of crickets and the fires of falling stars, where blades of grass wet with night chill the feet, and earth presses back and pushes us through the dark, dark night.<\/p>\n

The Kitchen Table
\n<\/strong>
\nThis pull, these hands,
\nthey move as swiftly as her thumb and forefinger
\nthrough a rosary.
\nI sit on a stool
\nbetween my mother\u2019s legs
\nat the long oak table
\nthat belonged to my grandmother.
\nIts wood hums turnips and colcannon.
\nI take a rubber grape from the bowl
\nand squeeze its stemless end
\nonto my tongue
\nbobbing it in and out of my mouth
\nand scratch my fingernail across
\nthe table until it fills with a waxy residue.<\/p>\n

The hairbrush scrapes the side of my face
\nthe comb exacts a part in the middle of my head
\nhalf and half I am
\nas she begins the twisting of braids through her fingers
\na tight tug with each rope of hair
\na quick yank on each side of me, then
\nshe puts two fingers in her mouth
\nand mats the downy crown
\non my forehead.<\/p>\n

Out of This Night
\n<\/strong>
\nThe blue light of winter
\npushes through the curtains
\nall around the window\u2019s ledge
\nit seeps in slowly and turns
\nto morning\u2019s white.<\/p>\n

You sleep upstairs
\npull the covers over your head
\nand in this artificial dark
\nyour room becomes a safe place
\nthe bed, safer still.<\/p>\n

I hear footsteps across the attic floor\u2014
\nbare toes moving tentatively over splintered boards,
\narms pulled tight across your body from the cold\u2014
\nfeet move with each creak of loose board
\ntrying to feel your way down the staircase.<\/p>\n

The water begins to run.
\nAnd run and run and run.<\/p>\n

I wish I could bathe you in that water
\nbaptize you pure
\nraise your body
\nout of the blue night
\nto the morning\u2019s light
\nand the gushing stars
\nwould wash over you,
\nand the roar that lies on the other side of silence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Air-Breathing Life Sleeping beside you is like sharing the sheets with a fish reeled up on the boat deck the hook rooted firm in your angry, sweet mouth you twist and twist circles, spirals, your tail flaps and beats, slap, slap, slapping on the wooden planks I dodge your sharp scaly sides and wonder are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2145,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions\/2145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}