Samantha Duncan
Tidal
In my body or my house,
you’re in a lonely
& in a lonely we jigsaw & I
extend
hands & plum lips
whatever radius –
builder, keeper, bloomer –
to spread the difficult paste of you.
The shapes of days change
& leave us wet, cold,
you make me
a meal, I’ll be the size
of something you can’t hold
in my body or my house.
Probably we could have
seven Neptunes
with room to spare,
but our islands
are violent,
& here I am wanting
the ground,
dwelling through morning’s
occupation, a cusp,
my lip’s blunt edge
an acrophobia. To have
& to halve, multitude
container. Again,
my disappearing work.
Sometimes,
I slow down for others
to catch up, some-
times
a chorus of embrace
presses me empty, or
a procession of you,
like when
I try to locate myself
asleep in the dream,
but it’s all you
falling, dwelling me
to embers, somehow.
Sometimes, the shape
of what matters changes,
& we orbit what is only
maybe the middle, centered
in synchronized whispers,
& I look at a sky
that feels less than
to calibrate me, us,
story. How to feel
a day as something other
than another day?
Always stretch first,
spend nothing
for worth. Be less
of a sound
frame-
work.
you’re in a lonely
& in a lonely we jigsaw & I
extend
hands & plum lips
whatever radius –
builder, keeper, bloomer –
to spread the difficult paste of you.
The shapes of days change
& leave us wet, cold,
you make me
a meal, I’ll be the size
of something you can’t hold
in my body or my house.
Probably we could have
seven Neptunes
with room to spare,
but our islands
are violent,
& here I am wanting
the ground,
dwelling through morning’s
occupation, a cusp,
my lip’s blunt edge
an acrophobia. To have
& to halve, multitude
container. Again,
my disappearing work.
Sometimes,
I slow down for others
to catch up, some-
times
a chorus of embrace
presses me empty, or
a procession of you,
like when
I try to locate myself
asleep in the dream,
but it’s all you
falling, dwelling me
to embers, somehow.
Sometimes, the shape
of what matters changes,
& we orbit what is only
maybe the middle, centered
in synchronized whispers,
& I look at a sky
that feels less than
to calibrate me, us,
story. How to feel
a day as something other
than another day?
Always stretch first,
spend nothing
for worth. Be less
of a sound
frame-
work.
Biography
|
Samantha Duncan (she/her) is the author of four poetry chapbooks, including Playing One on TV (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2018) and The Birth Creatures (Agape Editions, 2016), and her work has recently appeared in BOAAT, decomP, Glass Poetry, Meridian, and The Pinch. She is a prose editor for Storyscape Journal and lives in Houston.
Twitter: @SamSpitsHotFire |
