You are a tortoise in a hard hat.
I am a heart growing gallons and gallons of hair.
You made it with me: a perfect love,
which went hard from the softness of its innards.
And though all the love went elsewhere, you hung around,
like a gas, like sand in my bikini pants.
Katharine Kilalea is the author of One Eye’d Leigh, shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize for writeers under 30.
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JILL PEARLMAN
One of us sleeping, one of us dreaming with open eyes / strands of your hair in the silver light / when I rubbed the hair in the small of your back, / you awoke to a dog’s sharp nails / You told me it wouldn’t have ended well / in the old country. // You smashing public windows, drunken brawls / in the metro
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AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL
Sometimes when they were young, I felt like / I was underwater and couldn’t make out sounds / or reason or rhyme, only coral clicks and distant / whale songs. A shiver of eel near my ankle. But /
trust me: one day you’ll surface. They start / walking, then running, and then they sit behind / a wheel.
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