posts tagged "libby burton"

 Those goddamn lonely moments when I address him in the orchard
 of his blue eyes, I ask him to tell me one unwholesome thing, and he
 deflects. I remember being the only one watching moon color clinging

 to the shoreline (white hairs flat against my legs). Somehow I knew what
 to notice about the heat of summer crouching in corners, and there I found
 a good and satisfying fear. His rugged forehead taught me to be incandescent

 with the promise of exception. And still I wish to speak some loose sentence
 in the orchard, in the office, in the gliding car: What is love? Is it piston motion?
 Is love a warm and quiet mouth? So I have inherited his tiny throat, squeezing food

 like a fist. Now home could be a folding of wings, some calculated sentiment.
 I remember his hands holding a map like smoke, my body strapped in the backseat
 becoming the shape of a girl, becoming the shape of a spare and exceptional girl.
-Libby Burton, "Dreaming the Places My Father’s Tongue Has Been In Summer"