Carol Alexander
Envy, or Intake
I could almost envy body, its luxurious swoon to the conqueror.
The fairytale stroke at midnight, a horse’s neigh—
kindling of protest and wariness lit to a firestorm.
O I need a river. A moat. One the other side,
a friend can’t bury her mother. Golden efficacy of prayer.
A dog howls down the block and body too howls,
sweats a fog of cells.
The virus besieges the town, wracked, bristling with arrows.
With a little flourish I tick off points of ingress,
armpit glands and throat, a rushing cage of birds in my head.
Then the nihilism begins, I can barely wait to rid self of self.
That too is a lie: meat and drink, a drift from one lilac window to the next.
If pivots to when. I will feed the hungry. Accept a truce.
—Submitted on 04/19/2020
Carol Alexander is the author of Environments (Dos Madres Press, 2018), Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press, 2017) and Bridal Veil Falls (Flutter Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Chiron Review, One, Southern Humanities Review, Sweet Tree Review, and other journals.
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