by Sophie Klahr
and thinking of how in the ocean once,
waist-deep, we fought.I had started drinking
again, trying to stop. Was that the time
we stayed in a motel called The Sunrise?
White wicker, the peach-brushed walls, a prism
tied by fishing line to the fan so that
a jewel seemed to float mid-air? What year
was that was that the year he wrote I can’t
be what grounds you ? A song is slipping in—
If you fall asleep down by the water—
Recall’s accumulation swallows place.
(Or, tell it this way:) memory rips me
from the land. I miss an exit. I mis
take this state for another. Take the wheel.
From:
Two Open Doors in a Field
Copyright ©:
2023, University of Nebraska Press
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