Lesle Lewis

You Go That Way

I turn the heat on and off a thousand times.

I make anti-gravity moves.

The mouths of the dead fall open.

Let’s let these things be by themselves, not goose-to-goose, duck-to-duck, dog-to-dog, person-to-person, civilization-to-wild, open-to -sanctuary.

Not bandages to names.

But to be methodical, to determine plausibility, to draw a puff.

Field meets field, one object meets another, one objection.

And papers, window cakes, fish tanks, donuts, hallucinated cartoons.

Not to mention the bicycle repair, bottle tipsy, rolls, locks, sailboat muses, leads, cones, a suitable caravan, sockets, easels, republics, daubs, naps, and miracle bambinos.

Be brave and smart little mouse.

You are someone of importance.

“Years and Years Went By”

Hopscotch, drugs, and Poppins.

Years and years went by.

Canyon, pool, and pothole.

Years and years went by.

The pond bubbled up and burped a stink.

The girls laughed on the porch.

Is it not possible to float in an infinite present?

Let’s talk about this now before it’s too late and two hour wars become three hundred years.

A Woman Visits a Woman

Morning light longs for itself, longs over the sea.

The moon over the ruins, the television and the remote, three stars, careless talk.

Men work outside and clocks tick the seconds by.

It’s not the anguish of illness.

Not the swelling, drooping, hanging, dangling water or hair.

It might be after-the-fact useful.

During, it flounders.

The earth turns and opens its mouth.

The hope is that this can do that.

Lesle Lewis’s books include Small Boat, Landscapes I & II, lie down too, A Boot’s a Boot, and her new book Rainy Days on the Farm. She lives in New Hampshire.
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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.