CYNTHIA ARRIEU-KING

Diary Pulled from the Lake

I guess it’s too late to live on the farm

by its side I felt as alone as I had always wanted
fields wide as tears and unallowed knowledge

I guess it’s too late to transpose the thoughtfulness of weeds
to the relevant birds

a tartness inexplicably
on my tongue, mushrooms the shape of fat pins

their camps nothing compared to cities,
compounds, yards

with a hand I pretended was shifting grasses—
at night I held my own head

sun a fist through
understanding—shit, silence is

a terrible listener, a
cry that mimics the dead grass
standing near green grass—

she had a point saying why do we think so much
about the caress when we

should think about
a steel trowel,

write no date on this—
too late for dust,

the mud cut from the boot
trying to love someone always eyeing

elsewhere and other faces
I was done with the smother and talk
I’d always hated

and felt the lake
blue as an eye looking away