PROJECTIVE, by JULIE MARIE WADE |
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Your body under-
water stands softens (pink fruit fallen) Or sleep, aquarium without glass pressing between us where are the smudge-prints now? I used to draw stars with a slick finger- tip on the car window’s crooked condensation doors slipping shut the way Sunday does Your body understands To be human is to know: you could have done more (a man bloodied, with starched shirt- cuffs his hands) Though you were not there, the atrium’s bright pane, & all of us contorted under glass— A gold compass arcs between the visible indi- visible (if perforated) plane tuck in the sheets, your shirt, a sweater Something in me craves order & not the brittle buttons only, fastened in a row We fold the corners each blue cotton cusp that overhangs its margin Cliff notes? Slow morning coffee? Nothing regrettable in a cool carafe except please do not reshelve the books Our sun-room, unoccupied for hours aloe-plant seeping/ cactus spine It seems unlikely, September after June The whole summer-season had subsumed us Pink the plush mouth, Green the taut vein Paper passed over with a clean hand. The mirror refutes its reflection two gloves to the wheel Apricots sliced over cottage cheese Remind me next time to breathe |
Julie Marie Wade is the author of ten volumes of poetry and prose as well as the recently released lyric essay collection, Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing (Ohio State University Press, 2020). A recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir and grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, she teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University and reviews regularly for Lambda Literary Review and The Rumpus. Julie is married to Angie Griffin and lives in Dania Beach.