Laurie Macfee

Habits


               Venice, Italy
 
I want to show you the cool U’s
of pink pleated skin I had cut into my body
last May. My torso a corset,
breasts a dime bag
four pounds off my chest.
 
You’re in your hotel, the canals lap
with a married funk—bay, piss, algae, tide.
 
Saturday we’ll meet in San Stefano.
You’ll give me my microscope
dragged through customs in a carry-on--
I wanted it back like our daughters from camp,
an old saw that doesn’t need rubbing.
 
Even wine won’t make me lay
my palm on your thigh
but confused alleys I’ll take your hand,
touch our oldest habit
before rain breaks on the bridge.
We’ll share your umbrella
instead of our lips.
 
In the downpour my fingers will braille
my bag until I find my own
familiar collapsed shape
on the bottom of the satchel
our child gave me last year when
I didn’t have a place to store things.
I’ve carried it everywhere since.

Harbinger­


                         This day no dregs to muddy
                                                     The broth’s thin skin
Fat waiting its skim this lush mouth
                                         Open and new green
 
            There’s a moment leaves unfurl
                                                     That confuses with fall
                         A red edge and latency
  My eye a camera
 
                                         Obscura throwing the future
                         Upside down
            The cortex and atlas tip of my spine
                                                     Terrified with no film
                                                                  How will I remember
                                         Clean sprockets pulling gelatin
            Toward its logical end
                         One stunned frame at a time

Incantation


            for my mom
 
You are dying every day
as much as me. I avoid the letterpress
 
and its expectation of lead
arranged one sort after the next
upside down, backwards, a Roliflex of type
and ground glass remove.
 
Easier to space letters
when it’s someone else’s words.
On the porch grapevines emasculate the trellis,
smother it with wild.
 
I will miss your gentle face.
I’m swimming backstroke but you’re dying
 
as much as me or
maybe more, every day our amber sky.
At the gym you hand me your hat.



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Laurie Macfee is a poet, artist, and non-profit art administrator. From 2015-2017, she coordinated then directed the writing program at the Vermont Studio Center. Publications include Forklift, Ohio; Ninth Letter; Tupelo Quarterly; Blue Lyra Review; Terminus; and the anthology Change in the American West, among others. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and abroad; she is currently finishing her first manuscript.