Featured Writer Devon Balwit
What We Are
Your head a rasp, and mine also
as we lean into one another, blurring
already porous borders, making
a hash of geometry, but coupled
so nicely across what may be
a spathe or a blade, a spear or a lapel.
As children, we learn to point
to things and name them, but this
goes to hell in the end, in a mad
gesticulation for a glass of water
while barking, a groping after lost
things. You are sutured for no reason
I can discern, while I am pocked
and pitted. We blame our childhood
or the rough journey, but it may just be
the way we were made. A tracery
of brick, a careless daubing. Neither side
matches, but we have learned to celebrate
imbalance, not to care when eyes
peer in between our slipped slats.
Let them look. Even clouds
pause overhead for a glimpse.
(after Max Ernst 2 Young Nudes)
About the writer:
Devon Balwit‘s most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found or are upcoming in Jet Fuel, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Rattle, Apt (long-form issue), Grist, and Oxidant Engine among others. Devon Balwit is the O:JA&L Featured Writer for June 2019.
Image: Rostro Trifrakcional by Christopher Alexander VazQuez. Acrylic markers, gold marker, silver marker on mixed media paper. 5 x 6 inches. No completion date specified. By permission.
