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My Sister Bathing
Spring struggles.
Seeds push and even koi turn upward, gumming
the sky for some purpose. Emily unpins
her hair, climbs in her bath.
Beneath, water smudges body’s shape.
All living things emerge.
She becomes
her painting—hung,
gray-black
above her.
She pulls the plug, her wet head
like violets spangled by rain. She
doesn’t swirl down, leaving
ankle streaks, calf’s black line. Her brow’s highlight
could be sunbeams, brash through her window—
meat of new buds pressed to pane. The last water slips
through the drain
as I slip from the doorjamb, sorry
for framing her between shower
rod and floor.
Artful Disappearance
Artful disappearance
is not so hard to master. Take the back roads.
If you notice your favorite professor planting, turn—
don’t elicit a debate on metaphors.
You’re too taken recalling something—
how ground fog turned
or lightning split night-clouds.
A poem could sing out like a bell if you listened.
Don’t enter the co-op
where shoppers share prayer
over the produce.
Or parties …where a man swirling his wine composes
poems in his “spare time.” And the fellow behind
says, “You should read so and so. Nobody writes without grief,”
which makes you wish you’d created artful disappearance earlier.
We all withdraw in our vague ways like my father’s slight form as he works away
his thoughts. My aunt disappears in wine, my brother-in-law in books, my grandfather
in his chair, and the neighbor boy into incomplete flight.
In this desertion, I am not asking much of you or myself.
I merely want the inauspiciousness of a leaf remembering the breeze.
Elise Gregory
Email: Elise Gregory
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