Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks August 2015 (Collaboration) | Page 38

Blanket
Nina O’Donovan
There is a new roof fitting itself to the sky,
sea-roughened and grey as the vast paving
I dropped teeth on as a child, lightheaded
and living faster. Outside a steep hill drops sweet
like the dip of a spoon, and in this life I see
my own reflection. It may come from narcissism.
It may come from gut. But its momentum is trapped,
a statue on one foot, it asks to be uprooted.
I can’t carve this future into something soft and creaseless.
If I was an artist I could catch its outstretch—
I would pull the army by the hand, out from the dark
intrusive damp, and ask it to stay.
On the line, a white sheet takes hard gulps of air.
I’m quick to learn its rhythm.
But in the morning it has lost its breath;
in the morning there is a small damp circle
under my cheek.

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