A Tenderness Like Knives
       

Beside the cottage, a forest she no longer wanders.
Beside the lamp, the remains of two Asian pears.

Beside her insomnia, a man who talks in his sleep,
who sleeps like a bundle of stones dropped off a bridge.

Beside midnight, a sorcery of words: the way miscarriage
re-writes itself as marriage (sic) or I, mirage, scar.

Beside the man's paperback about a lost arctic explorer,
half a glass of water, which centers the room.

Or divides it. Beside the point, this window cracked
open and the cat sliding through, so she sips, as if waking

to stars equaled banishment, or water equaled light,
a desert that fills her the more she wets her throat.

Copyright © 2009 Lance Larsen All rights reserved
from Backyard Alchemy
University of Tampa Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission