Intuition It begins in my hands. The idea, a perfect greenness, speeds up my pulse. I feel it, radioactive throb in my wrists. The endpoint of loneliness is to escape the living. I do not mean to stare into this wilderness. Above me, miles of angry sky. Like a secret stored inside the body’s cells. Like having a crush on the secret you. Like my mother, shrinking more each day, still telling me which hill to climb and do I hear her? Am I near enough? Because just this once I have no doubt: when she dies we all die with her. ♨ Until Dawn, Barbaric My mother dies on occasion, looping toward her extinction. Each time she returns to me in a new version. She speaks slowly, the syllables sweeping, as though she’s unaware of the violet pansies blooming inside her throat. But she knows they’re there. She nurtured them as they grew. Tonight her battered voice sings sotto voce from her very bones, introducing me to a music that can only be described in the imagery of Arkansas: deer night-grazing in the meadow. You eat the glow of dark songness. Because of their eyes. Their eyes. ♨ Dear Always Always traveling toward brittle Always something wrapped in plastic Forgetting the words of the Kaddish prayer Hiding tears from my kids and siblings Because I am now Because I am dead to the living Dead to the dead Buried in cold sunshine The brilliance
—Submitted on 01/20/2023
Robin Reagler is the author of Into The The (Backlash Press, 2021) and Night Is This Anyway (Lily Poetry, 2022), as well as the chapbooks Teeth & Teeth (Headmistress Press, 2018) and Dear Red Airplane (Seven Kitchens Press, 1st ed. 2011, 2nd ed. 2018).
Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication. Click here to submit work to Flush Left.
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