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Kristene Brown
Against Evidence
Some say you are there. Between
the black
absence
of bare tree branches,
and a dark scroll of crows startled
into flight, you are
the thing that rises. A shifting water
of bodies,
moving and breaking, as the ocean
moves and breaks
in the muscle memory of waves.
This, I believe. I have been taught
to believe
you are the one
who put the pit in the plum,
the fruit on the trees, the drift
and surge in the salt water
sea.
That part is easy.
Just as it is easy to turn my face up
to the grey streaked sky
oyster lipping against a wall
cloud of rain
and know it is good, perhaps even
great. Just as it is easy to admit
that the pulse in the hum of the sun
and the breath in the moons cold rub
is you.
When I look at all this
I know there is a design to the finery
and fuckery
of merely being. How could I not
know this? Having faith in the divine
is easy. And yet, I cannot believe,
do not believe, you are the one
who made me.
Limbo
That slim skim of space
between ruined and saved,
a defining
divide
empty of shimmer,
where nothing banks.
This is the moment before
the first morning call
of hawk and jay, before
the open-eye
of stretch and wake.
This is the vase
of bent back stems
without root or bloom,
a thin horizon line
of no-man’s-land
with no beginning
and no end.
And this is where I am,
toeing the split
both ways. Aching to know
how low can I go?
How long can I remain
bunched in that black
expanse
of stuttering grey
with my two dumb feet
two stepping
into a shoulder shimmy,
stay below the pole,
fool’s shuffle
do-si-do.
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