Marjorie Sweetko
I mix the words for rain and cry
Both words plop out – pleu:
a stop-home sound, plaintive and watery
lip-explosion, slipping down the palate
to a damp French vowel: a gargle, sullen
mist becoming drizzle, spitting muddy
pockmarks in the boulevard’s complexion.
Glued to windowpane, the sky retching,
inconsolate afternoon drumming its hours
against my forehead, in the air’s mute grief,
I scrape a foreign tongue across the script:
Shut that umbrella, s’il vous plait,
it hasn’t cried for weeks, the earth, the crops
are desperate – these? they’re only teardrops spattering
my cheeks – oh no, don’t worry, I’m not raining.
Page(s) 43
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