New Sappho poem!

ploce please,

please, have an example, ask
an exam an, example, an ax asked,
ax ample, number one, an example

an ax asked and
ample

Poem in Four Parts

More often than not I dislike this life. I listen to Paul Lansky too loud and the left side of my face begins to cave in. I lose 15 lbs then 20. I like the weight loss fine until someone mentions that I must only weigh 105; my face is sunk sinking below the surface of what skin can account for. In the construction of my body I delay cause and effect until one eclipses the other. I have no desire to go to New York. Sinking sunning I do the same work in grad school as not. I learn new words and wash them around. I walk out on the fire escape breathe out then in. Peaches on the back deck ripen.

*

I fake out my gym teacher. Grip the seat of the minivan until my dad comes home from work to pry me out or so he hopes. I have seen birds and other abnormalities. I know what it’s like indoors and I like it there. While I am at this, I will admit to other monstrosities as well. Eating soup off the back of a spoon. Eating my reluctance to earn anything other than an A. My life now coming back in heavy metal. Goldspun and fatal. Granite forms the topography of Maine.

*

In Gloucester, MA, a store called Hegemonic Computers. You think you know a word and then there it goes sneaking around with hardware and selling computers to the crazy rich and the Mexican kid who plays outside in the streets. If this were a movie, an open water sprinkler or fire hydrant would slick us down with city water; someone would sell ice cream bars out of a truck on wheels down the wet sidewalk. Watching TV, the first thing the program hosts do is soak the girls through.

*
Refusal of a key lime pie causes quite a stir. I have shrunk my need for sugar in the past. Dripping crystal hot I could offer you a patch of leg sliding off. I promise my tai chi teacher no more lack of rest. I slide this poem from my left wrist.