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.
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.