from distinctions
A poem
What range of tones are possible
in the phrase See for yourself?
Sarah Gridley, Loom
*
Expand, to widen. Borrowed hours, function. Blazing heat.
Perhaps, we stay awake. We know: the summer still of discon-
tent. Excessive: rooms we can’t yet leave. Her kingdom for a
working AC unit. Cool down, some. She swims the mornings.
Sixteen weeks: we measure eyelids, ears, the length.
Shifting eyes to front. A habit of apples. The white flesh of page. The
moorings. Rush, a second time. Starfish sing. Nuance, of tiny
boats. A tin ear.
*
A small discretion, slight. Exactitudes. This question still of
luck. Adrift. Spread out, across. To pre-exist. A stubble, roughly
nine months. Dailyness. The pattern, of little feet. A landscape
of pretending. Stacked boxes, letters. We write in colour, songs
of lightening. A dedicated commons. Shadow. The desire of
mothers. Certainty: the handle of an axe, a hammer. Vowel-
thin and unaligned. A spider’s web of chance.