ISSUE TWELVE | SPRING 2019
it is eleven here but it is noon there.
look how an hour, how a sweetheart
of trees, how mercy.
i am learning electrical, tying ribbons
to the slates in the wall.
it’s nice to see what lives inside sometimes.
as the curls fall to the floor, this pile
these hands have nothing to do with faith
beyond these fields.
i lay the pliers down in dust on the organ
and who named the wired piano
after the engines of our body
what’s hardly bruiseable
between downdeep and our skin.
the question floats off like a bit of milkweed
caught by a melody of wind.
a friend mans the drill to pull a square bit
out of a socket and the breaker box gets flipped
and flipped.
tomorrow i won’t reroute a wire
just let what hollows through me pump.
nicole v basta's chapbook V was chosen by Rigoberto González as the winner of The New School's Annual Contest. Her poems have found homes in Ninth Letter, Pinwheel, New South, Painted Bride Quarterly, Bone Bouquet, and elsewhere.
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