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Remorse

A stick wrapped with sour sponge

to wet the lips; a grave dug

for the sacrificed heart.

Catheter that won’t insert.

This lit chain of stores where families eat

beside a highway, wet with rain.

The hurt you feel tonight I made.

It makes me small, crouched again

beneath a desk, spindly, wobbled

open maw that held a ruler,

mess of pencils, books in newsprint.

At the stoplight now, weather unspools

windshield lesions. Someone somewhere

tunes a bomb to her body.

In extremis. What a pain

like hers must feel like, bifold life,

this or that, I can’t imagine.

Strapped to mine is yours, I am

extended past our species.

Nuclei in our four hands.

Feet with penitential tongues,

pray here, pray now, always pray for

to be given.

from OrexiaFind it in the library

Copyright © Persea Books 2017
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Persea Books.

Published in Lisa Russ Spaar Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.