HALA ALYAN
Bore
It appears like a word and then I pray.
Weekly poems, selected by the editors. Featuring new work as well as poems from our rich archives.
It appears like a word and then I pray.
We are five
months into a game
neither of us know
how to play.
“What’re they selling there?”
“What we already have.”
An afternoon run up the false summit
of every promising idea,
Great pyramids of salt, line
the shore, coarse mounds
I’d like to climb, fly
down in a red sled.
Sweeter, nearly cloying as you and I
eat and eat until the bag folds over.
Out of swollen bellies and wild wind waves.
They feed the feathered beast.
They feed monsoon storm strumming out of the Gulf of Alaska.
Not even the water, churning forever
in the river’s holiest mouth
would envy me.
If latitude and longitude. If the trees,
Once emptied, stood upright again.
Remember me knee-deep.
Remember me kelp-bedecked.