by Carrie St. George Comer


Memory: the enemy. Its nude and worthless body

enters the evening as if on wings, smiling and waving a white feather,
first quiet, then tanked,

but still a rating of G: for mild peril, for some
scary images,

for emotional brutality.
When it sleeps, its prick hangs against the bedward thigh,

the tip rising, then dropping,
then sticking,

a bit of spank to hold its place, the prick long as a
sonnet

and as thick, with a turn near the end.
A woman with a beetle in her hair asks if it was awful.

Was it awful? It wasn't so awful. We watch it sleep,
then we sleep.

By morning it's gone, its print left in the sand
just inches from the sharky waters

where a lemon-yellow boy glides past in a sailboat.



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