Corinne Lee

Colin Doyle, untitled (Depression glass hand)

Colin Doyle, untitled (Depression glass hand)

“sidewise movements are much more comfortable and natural, and . . .
prevent or greatly reduce the risk of glass arm.”

—William G. Pierpont, The Art & Skill of Radio-Telegraphy, 1997

After the wintry diagnosis
of soon-blue lungs, we flame
the ether—

my blood loud and gummed,
winds sinking—

our hands in grief become serpent-footed fish,

clasped together              —despite rising floe
—despite no restraining

the sudden wide poison

in my flesh captive
to paths unsprung—and yet—

happy denial, like surface,
still dolphins this region—

so as if from sea we upfloat, sidelong—
pregnant in and by lakes,

palm to palm, pretending
we are fluid undefiled—

so that we can
meet lightness—and not shatter,

but Run.

 

Colin Doyle, untitled (Guantanamo sea glass)

Colin Doyle, untitled (Guantanamo sea glass)


“Also known as ‘mermaid’s tears’ . . . sea glass is rare in most places around the world. But, in Guantanamo Bay anyone can visit Glass Beach and take home a handful.”
—Sergeant Emily Green, “Glass Beach on Guantanamo Bay,” America’s North Shore Journal, 2009

At Camp X-Ray, our weather (the bullet train)
cannot listen due to headlong.

Tenderloin lights and glassmen.

If everyone is the police, where do we survive?

Excludables include all affection,
even that of pastries.

Another corporal leashing
jumped orange.

Our headstalls? Mouthfuls of blood feathers, gristle.

Venereal are the elephants
of patience. Of the buried law they sing.

Gasoline has dealt with our river——————.

In every attic our mothers keen, bulging
with pins and mermaid

tears. Iodine vistas. Indecent sleep.
A boxed rock’s thoughts.

Occult chains suspending.

On to the next hook stop: eel quay of Delta.

And then a final sanding, a rounding—
into grain—
into vanishment—

erasure of imperial eye.

Corinne Lee’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in dozens of literary magazines, and she has been a multiple nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Her book PYX won the National Poetry Series and was published by Penguin. Ms. Lee was chosen in 2007 by the Poetry Society of America as one of the top ten emerging poets in the United States. Six of her poems were included in Best American Poetry 2010. She was educated at the University of Southern California, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (fiction), and the University of Texas at Austin (poetry).
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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.