dear reader dearest little god of breath
if you say i weave my body
so i weave my body
into a flea market this needy grove
of copper rings & peacock feather hats
no hook should have to bear
you say so i do
buy two brown boots & because they're too stiff
i tug them up & slog alone
through green wheat in downpour
clubbed lashes tracing my fingers as i wonder
what outlasts sadness or rain
because that is all some do & all
i would do again & stepping past my door
laces dangling like glowworms’ ruthless silks
i wrench off my boots
watch them piss themselves at the hearth
& weep not for harrowed beauty
the floorboards drowning beneath it
say i become a billowed field of weeping
& i pour myself in two hands & paint
two used boots & carried in their wilted throats
like a seed from a sunflower's pit i drop
dewy from your lips in the shell of
this story or the other
where i buy a pistol
& hug the muzzle to my chest push
one thumb against the gun's one
bullet soldered to a single bone in my spine
whose name i have no breath to say
dear reader
dear god
forgive
boxed under a woven bed of ivy
on which a sparrow stomps
whistles like a wet log in a pyre
& loosens the tongue
of a down feather
my seventh thoracic vertebra
like the abandoned sketch that ruptured
my faith in preservation when it burned & broke
blackened scraps rafted toward
over the hearth & two slouched boots
it couldn't save an open door
rising out of your lungs
Tim Lynch has published with tenderness, yea, Connotation Press, Mead, APIARY & others. He has directed workshops for young writers through Rutgers University in Camden, NJ & conducts interviews for Tell Tell Poetry.