Hold Desire as Sand

 

by stephanie roberts

 

hold a view

you on a chair febrile & thirsty;

from above he pours into the cup of your waiting

a glass sand memory.

 

grain, tumbled world, glint of cobalt, green

(celadon sea to forest deep), smoke, & troves

of gold—tiger-eye & beer bottle molasses.

 

the ocean overture frosts time

blunting all but diamond hurts

the tiniest bits fresh & sharp.

 

gather trust as a weapon against the past

—agile waves of cool clarifying tune—

counter to isolation in the swelter belly of summer.

 

your lover’s years burst into the unobtainable

cosmos. dust in the glimmer gaze of entropy.

 

undimmed by jealousy’s lighter than air smoke

you are determined

to land what teethes the line

even against the gravity of fear

in your power.

fear, what he undresses

like a physician grades

the take of a skin graft

over the scar of memory.

 

although you are two neodymium magnets

separated by the paper of the past

your arsonist heart shakes accelerants

over offering—a perverse mode of keeping

 

—awkward transfer to positive effect.

 

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stephanie roberts was born in Central America, grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and now abides in a wee town in Québec, Canada. A 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee and Silver Needle Press Poetry Contest winner, her work has been featured in numerous periodicals and anthologies including Arcturus, Atlanta Review, Verse Daily, The Stockholm Review of Literature, L’Éphémère Review, Occulum, and FLAPPERHOUSE. Twitter shenanigans @ringtales

 

 

View the writer’s Pieces of Slag here.