Joseph E. Lerner

Safe

Such a relief
to touch the tongue
in so many ways:
the ligature of palate,
the choreography of teeth,
a musicology that bleeds,
burns, and then recedes,
glow by glow,
like the lights of a tunnel--
so frangible, a long way down,
and, ultimately, collapsible.
Still, one enters, not unaware
but undaunted: a place
of refuge for the hunted.


 


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Joseph E. Lerner has worked as a photographer, filmmaker, writer, editor, and small press publisher. His stories, essays, reviews, and poems have appeared in The Washington Book Review, The San Francisco Review of Books, 100 Word Story, deComP MagazinE, Gargoyle, Pif, PoetsWest, and elsewhere. After several years traveling in Europe and South Asia (and one year traveling by train across the U.S.), he has returned to the Seattle, WA, area, where he’s working on a novel as well as poems and short stories.