Lily Greenberg: What I Don’t Say


grows legs and kicks me.
It follows like one deer after another
across the highway. Don’t touch me
I’ll walk rain-soaked
before a ride in your truck don’t
stop for me. A parable:

          One man promises a farm, two mountains,
          and ten thousand turnips to a second man.
         They raise seedlings to fruit—
          every bit of flesh, they sell.

          The first man says more.
          The second does not say
          I am hungry and cannot grow.

          Driving silence up
          the mountain, a woman arriving
          to two men is a rock thrown
          into a pond, breaker of clouds.

I tell you now, words will walk
out of my mouth and gather at your bed
like bad-dreaming children.
There your gray yard is ungrowing.
Your kingdom a circle of swallows.

     

                    

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