Repent

Elyse Fenton
| poetry

 

The dumb thing I said keeps coming
back to dismantle my house, poor dredged

brain with its banging doors and hinges
halved to sheer the sky. Swallows traffic

the opposite way to the chimney, orange
construction cones lift toward some secondary

heaven. Air turns back from smoke
to air. Big chain-link mouth, big weeping

tongue: sutures only temporarily intact.
If I know I have my whole life both loved

and spoken with precisely the wrong
kind of restraint why stop now, water

rising against the sill, blue tarp flagellating
roof beams with its last good wing?

 

Elyse Fenton is the author of the award-winning poetry collection, Clamor. Her second manuscript, Sweet Insurgent, won the PSA’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Prize. She lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.

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