Facial Recognition
. kept from mourning tata
. (well-meaning grown-ups finding grief too raw)
i opened in my mind a journey to his everlasting life
. small face expanding
. under such overwrite
. that no outward mark betrayed the wound beneath the skin
. mother’s death memorialized
you see
. this crease above my eyebrow that dammed uncivil flood
. so the child the dog the spouse
. not be awash in that torrential
. tree-toppling flood
. deep channels running alongside mouth
for all the times laughter burst out like huddled bird
. sprung skyward
and these grooves like rake marks above
. beneath my lips
ah I have kissed and kiss and (sand not running out) will kiss
***
Putting on Weight
. until i lived here
i lived in innocence
. no fear of ticks
kept me from the long grasses
. no dark suspicions
made water solid beneath my palm or sole
. coupled new leaves
were glued together by love not greenworms
. each road edge
was unlined like a young face without the triad poison
. perhaps we despite our settling
long subcutaneously for bliss of relocation
. perhaps the weight of so much known
will fly as elemental particles in that last firing
***
Anca Vlasopolos published the award-winning novel The New Bedford Samurai; the award-winning memoir No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement; four collections of poems, Often Fanged Light (forthcoming, Adelaide Books, 2019), Cartographies of Scale (and Wing) (2015); Walking Toward Solstice (2012); and Penguins in a Warming World (2007); three poetry chapbooks, a detective novel, Missing Members, and nearly three hundred poems and short stories in literary journals.
