My sleeve isn’t full of trickery.
I don’t have a magic box to take you
away but return you unharmed.
I don’t have a key for the underwater
straightjacket and chains, and I hide
no impossible doves in my coat.
I don’t have visions or communion
with the beyond, but I’ll hollow
my body until it’s a crater, a posthole
for you to sink your tether into.
Or I’ll grow hair like a blackbear
cub if it’ll soften your sleep some.
Lay your head right here,
my lungs can be your creaking bed
or I can crack my bones and weave
a hammock from my tendons
for you to stretch between two
linden trees. Or I’ll eat wool
and down and rearrange my belly
into a nest for your kneecaps.
I can’t conjure. I don’t have any
sorcery to offer besides the will
to break this body into whatever
shape will keep you closest.
“I mean she’s not exactly a complex figure. You can look at her and pretty much imagine what that whole relationship was like. She’s like a dog. One bit of kindness and she’s so grateful she forgets about what happened a minute ago.”
-Jonathan Dee
“I would like to say that love shows itself in strange ways, but that would not be true in this case. Sometimes love refuses to show itself at all. It remains perfectly hidden. One spends a lifetime concealing it. There is an art to this.”-Ben Marcus
