By Buffy Shutt

 

i

She grabs the friend-thermometer.
Instant winter.

My words a snowbank.
She sets me afield
in frozen rhythm with the wind.

I whirl back, remembering what I said.
Repeat—
repeat the carelessness.
Can’t hear it. The wind is in charge.

There are such things as sentence stems,
line scaffolding, word banks, cut-outs.
I count out the words on my fingers.

I open my mouth
the wave
the straight pin
the seed
spill out.

Oh, to be a bird and to have a tail, a rudder
that moves effortlessly and within that gesture is sorry.

ii

I dig: my hand deep into the bed
slits open the mattress.

I light: an old newspaper with a matchstick,
burn off my fingertips.

I research: apologies, rituals.

I tread: lake inside of me welcome-deep.
My skin itches. The drought is real.

I pull tight on the threads that fasten
my mouth to the doorknob. Arms unadorned.
I slam the door. Ten times a day.

iii

Unlike marriage there is
no ceremony.

Unlike marriage

ugly words —
cannot be
sucked back
or sloughed off
like so many snakeskins
piling high the marriage bed.

Unlike marriage
it expects more.
It is that tenderness
that waits to be trampled.

 

About the Author

A former marketing executive for movies and documentaries, Buffy is a two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. Her work appears in Anthropocene, Drunk Monkeys, Lumina, Sonic Boom, Dodging the Rain, Split Lip Magazine, The Door is a Jar. Buffy is collaborating with younger artists on a work of eco-feminism. She is learning about the present moment from her two grandsons. She has published two novels and her first poetry collection, Recruit to Deny will be published in 2023.