Sunken
The wrong body washed ashore and makes sure
to keep me rising and reloading.
I am alone. Wildly alone.
The crisis comes apart with a
screwdriver.
Then the pieces unfold and heave to the
surface.
spilling out and staining. No real
beginning ever comes in from a storm.
So I stand back and keep dry, but you
are dripping
into the out of breath scorching silt rising,
my body breaking down to chemicals,
then just carbon.
baking like a cake that won’t come out clean
in the center.
Talia Reed is a public school English teacher in rural Indiana. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Switchback,
WOMB Poetry, Arsenic Lobster, Avatar
Review, elimae, Wicked Alice, Main Street Rag, and others. She is a columnist for Oranges & Sardines and she
occassionally writes for her local South Bend Tribune. Her reviews have
appeared in Rain Taxi Review of
Books and MiPOseias Magazine.