from NER 41.1 (2020)
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Imagine a desert and call it yearning.
For years, nothing but sand
in your teeth: The viper skulls
you mistook for cherries, their
crunch, dry-heave sobs, beating
your chest, you could’ve opened
the cage of your ribs like a prayer
book. Remember how you praised
every misplaced grace of water
how the collected drops shot
through you with diseases. Every
fresh-found fruit a hallucination
each scavenged seed a swallowed
nail, until one day you look up
from your feet, a hawk condescends
from the sky, its cry saws the air
and there suddenly against your face
an entire forest.
you should have seen it cleaved
between the sand and the sky
like a sheet, coming with its dark
its greens so deep they’re purple
as the veins of your leg, so purple
you could unthread them each
and gum the grapes off. The trees
offer you everything.
At home, your lover bends against
so much scrutiny. He wonders
into becoming anything other
than a forest, and you made it
this far, but linger at the edge
as if you could enter.