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    A Darker Ribbon

    Lift the Flesh door—

    Vein seen blue
    through the veil of skin, as light

    through blotched glass.
    Pulse implies sequence, light in circuit.

    Blood makes its uncanny route
    through the body, ribboning

    into, through, then past—
    Living is ritual and repetition.

    Passage refigures the flesh as translucent:

    it brightens the surface.  But there
    is no surface except

    the marrow’s inmost window
    by which the cell is born—eluding light
    into movement.



    Elegy

    Wilted carnation leans far over the edge of the pot
    wanting to poet not pot want turned turning to tint
    tint to

    leggy on their stems turning to steam turning
    to evening just even and darkness ness nest

    the length that it takes that it goes to that the
    stale no stalled flower flow all

    error flowing flopping over so the brown
    petal pet partial   touches detaches    the last

    time I did   will ever saw sort sorted
    through your house   my house

    And the petal bruised inclining declining
    to what it can’t touch detach its last

    scent sent flesh and spice its droop leaf
    looped down to the dish wish wish

    was yours not yours yearn mine
    no error all the length it goes nowhere
    to



    Sun’s Net

    Arise awry. Bless bliss.
    This: thus sun sung
    on dawn. Bird burred
    in song insensate as

    asters stir tulips.  Two lips
    address: undress, win kisses
    in chaos endured. In duration
    shun sorrow, so rove

    raven and crow, haven encode.
    Bright benighted tedium, medium
    of hover over ever. Garden
    guarding virtue veers to

    lust lest bliss blister,
    stir. Amen’s amends.

     

    Elizabeth Robinson is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Rumor (Parlor Press, 2018). She has received grants and awards from the Fund for Poetry, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Maison Dora Maar. A new book, Being Modernists Together, is forthcoming from Solid Objects in 2022. In 2023, Threadsuns will publish her collection Thirst & Surfeit.

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