The Bluestocking 2023-24

2: erosion a hundred thousand feet have smoothed the stone pavement in someone’s mother’s old town: “there’s not a lot of science to it.” “there is, honey. there is.” every single day we dog-ear our skin with fists and then we flatten in sleep and then it’s like nothing was ever amiss; when the dog finally gets up again, stump leg now shielded by fur and the new stairs of the burnt cathedral finally start to dent in the middle and the children finally return to the square where the chrysanthemums edge into the cracks of a wall mottled by bombs.

3: proof

glow, bomb, glow like

a shooting star at a sunset parade, bomb can you smile for me? peep out of your pocket-slot in time and give me a wink, tease me, bomb because how will i know you’re still there? because i want to know if you will end me, stain my

pretty outside with my ugly insides and lay me down in a plywood box

but mostly i want to know if you’ll end my mother, whose

love is the red in my blood and the red of my sunset

that pumps my tired heart and soothes my sore eyes

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