from HUSH SESSIONS
Hold the light up to me like something small, she said.
Rinds were slippery beneath his fingers and his fingernails
slipped in. His concern was the white tent tooth-like at the back
of the farm his arm could obliterate if lifted near
to his eyes as the smallness she wanted. The telescope was his favorite form
of aggression, or the bag game. How she reached in and the air
didn’t feel remarkable, despite his insistence she mark
her findings with the little pen which of them uncapped.
*
The day of the experiment, they had not bathed.
He brought the equation out and sat it like birthday cake
onto the bench. The anthem, the way knobs to the right
heat, was prepared. They sang it over lunch: loose packets of amen—
a fuse not to be refused, a fuse not to be…& so on.
It wasn’t a very good hymn—nonetheless they ducked on high
notes, like something were going off
above them. Debris flaked off their tongues.
from HUSH SESSIONS
He stole boxes off their packed things. Her disapproval
didn’t take. In a bonfire that looked like a glass
when he stood over it and looked down
is where he stashed them. It was his third sculpture
called The Detriment of Ice. The forecast of rain
pained her for that. He renamed it
Our Hyphen Jealousies
in scorn of their gloves.
She did not approve for different reasons,
though of different reasons
she was fine with.
*
A thermos boasted its contents—and she liked that enough
to mimic with her blouse. He called his thirst
into question. He pulled the comfy bed from the comfortable couch
his reclining broke the hierarchy between. If they had a pool
they agreed to understand one another underwater for a length of time
measured by what sun can do to skin
instead of the other option. She brought a bird home
that handed its beak over like an ingredient. They passed
the bird between them and read passages that sounded like wings
in turn.
