by Bobbi Lurie

An Increase in Silence

Previously published in Greif Suite

Harm is the scholar of thorns and thought its repetition and what is that smell, dear Lord, seeping out through the crevices of being this body, this bed such a plank for this festering vessel.

And they say in their multitudes to remind us of good deeds/ kind thoughts, what brought me here and brings me still is the cruel edge for all collect their coupons, they take the good parts out and keep it for themselves and dress in fine fabrics and gawk. Only those who love can sit and watch.

I have analyzed paintings in my day, I have sought to dance animated to illustrations but now the drop cloth is being taken by the workers and their skin beside the picture window shimmers.

I have finished first, beyond the grave from where I’ll speak, though planted like a crop and famous for it still.

Life venerates the bedding of the dead.

Soft Fibers Adorn the Diminishing Landscape

Previously published in Grief Suite

When they finally dragged me in, pinned with stars and a promiscuous love

for the mentholated bushes, I was willing to admit anything:

that my life was persistently frightening,

that my stone heart feasted on solitary meals

fed through a slot in the door,

That I am my own suffering.

It wasn’t so bad. My time here was limited.

To be healed I needed things: a red plastic handbag filled with copper

pennies,

the ginger and gentian of another’s eyes,

a man’s face pressed between black pages.

But in the story by the time he decides to love me,

I’ve already left, bereft of him, floating through halls, talking to God.

In the end I searched through hidden drawers, avoiding the FM voice in my head, and

there, beneath the creased papers and illuminated manuscripts, with the sugar,

some loose change.

And I found the dark spelling of my life.

Bobbi Lurie is the author of four poetry collections, most recently the morphine poems. She is currently working on a book about/with Marcel Duchamp.