Lisa Ciccarello
(the shore in parts) the inside of shells; also time:
a charm, he says, but at the end of the chain, only a watch.
the shore in parts: rock & where water has worn the rock down; water
& where water becomes foam on the stones. Also egg & wood. Also glass ground fine as sand. & the eyes on you.
a waste of pearl & silver.
the watch in parts: the hours. Every single thread. To never have them back.
trade: watch chain, charm, finger. Anything becomes a bead. Anything, a blanket.
(the shore in parts) a stone-stack:
by leather cord: to measure.
the length of it. Too the welt it raises.
egg stone in the palm. The repetition, finger after finger. I keep trying to lower my voice.
I want it down eye-flat. Keep pressing.
lay still: rib rest, a stack. It isn’t going to be the weight of it, but the balance.
black sand pounded to chalk, the river, black line below the eye.
(the shore in parts) water clear as sand when it becomes glass:
yolk-moon in the throat. Clear as the white of an egg.
transparent over the hour & the mirror. I am trying to see you the way that I see you.
the water a kind of glass that holds nothing. Lift the glass in yr hand & it breaks:
bruised skin of the thumb. What enters the water: weakened.
shines the length of the shore: scales. Under the sand & still: the uncountable stripped.
too the uncountable eggs.
(the shore in parts) the black of the water is the blue of the sky:
in the black mirror the trees appear as trees with paper laid over them.
Someone is going to trace the number of each.
I can see the palm of the hand: a blanket coated with salt.
more to measure than align: copper pins go tender under. A notch in each brackish head.
what we preserved we set to ride: a horse in the shape of a dog.
with every step the salt retreating into birds. I talk to lay the sky over the sky.
(the shore in parts) the double of everything, though somewhat less:
struck: the arc pressed, abrasion & time, fallen upon.
the category of shards: glass, sand, voice, the broken branch,
a stone direct against another stone, shell underfoot, a feather lost, bone in both hands.
the water is a mirror & when he holds yr face to it your open mouth becomes the black mouth of
the water.
what had you been trying to return. He peels away the silvering. He wants to
take it apart until it can’t see itself anymore.
(the shore in parts) temperature & sound:
span: thumb to tip, to cover the length with the length.
with your hands: a given. How did you allow this to happen.
an animal sound. The back that faces the back. Aligning for what’s never coming.
the sun on the sand & it is burning. Something ceases, something withdraws
& it pulls the burning out from you. How cold & dark coincide.
everyone knows the same song all at once, singing.
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Lisa Ciccarello’s poems have appeared in H_NGM_N, Saltgrass, Sixth Finch, elimae, Anti-, Poor Claudia, & Corduroy Mtn., among others. She is the author of two chapbooks: At night (Scantily Clad Press, 2009) & Atnight, the dead (Blood Pudding Press, 2009).