Today's poem is by Alyse Knorr

Alternate Telling of the Old Year
       

No matter which world we split into, let
          every chance end not a chance but a beam

of light poured onto me by a blind Christ—
          yes, you burned my whole wax body—

in the hot Georgia forest where all I needed was
          courage or Yeager or the poetic liberty

to replace "or" with "and"—a whole night
          of and's running their fingers over each other

in a tent yellow and plastic pitched in the pines
          while somewhere up the road a girl sleeps alone

in the flatbed of a pickup, hugging the toolbag,
          shivering into its black bold "HELP"

as I shiver into you and you into me, lost
          in our and's, in the great and of our joining.

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Copyright © 2024 Alyse Knorr All rights reserved
from Ardor
Gasher Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission