AGAINST THE BODY’S BLUE UNWIELD
BY ALEC HERSHMAN
The mind is buoyant and just like it,
I lift my skirt above the water-mark,
for anyone. Bothered eyes
take my legs
for a guess, though
it doesn’t have to work that way—
a scar’s all glitz, really,
for predictions.
I cheapen those who look at me, and skin
begins misunderstandings
like a lake
will dream the trees surrounding it to kelp.
Despite the solemn looks that tag us
as adults,
it’s possible to drag the water
and whistle a fizzy song. Regardless
how sharp the razors are, the wishes work
both with and without reason:
a boy, once a man,
once stumbled back from me, oak among oaks,
into low sunlight which made him golden
and impossible. To remember
isn’t going backwards;
it only seems that way—the wish, like minutes
from a long infatuation taken down
in mere initials which
you carved into his trunk.
