Ars Poetica as the Sexy Little Em Dash by Katherine Irajpanah

the pressure to live off the surface of your cold, cold knees

Ars Poetica as the Sexy Little Em Dash

by Katherine Irajpanah

---

lounging in your maroon dress at the end of my sentence—
your sweaty hand reaching out into the silence, always
sipping on the hush of a lover who swears off erotic
pleasure—the split between poplar & tree—the pressure
to live off the surface of your cold, cold knees. Because
my loaded, rupturing heart sinks down in reflection pools
at the center of that old cemetery—now, bird sanctuary.
Come with me & whisper conspiratorially—the only
way I know how—to the red cardinals writing poetry
on the burial site of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—
he has rested long enough—so long we have arrived
at that terrible precipice, again. Say we live in his death
box with the third wall cut out like a diorama, & we are
made of clay—remade by something traceable—not dust
but the curvature of your pursed lips. You are the line I
hold in my chest with too much certainty—I cannot
release you without this pause about how I am angry
with the gentleness of your teeth—the stinger to your
bee—boomerang of history—O, how we threw it—
throw it all back to the sky—