Megan Leonard

Against

a known ocean breathing from a dried shell to live in at four a.m. when you and the dream and the cabernet put on winter boots and start digging —

the wet sand not frozen of course but cold enough to give you a headache just from touching it —            you are looking for a small cask unknown shape

tin-lined warped from a hundred-fifty winters at least —        the small voice from the shell the quieter louder one from the waves these two they told you

they told you they had something for you something waiting for you and the wine made you believe it or rather to be more honest the wine

made you admit out loud to believing what you always have believed and here you are then breathing cold as cold as water

in the heart of the heartest winter and breathing from a dried shell speaking            whispering            singing to you

in its coldest            believingest voice ever waiting            for your nails to scrape against

Synesthesia

a honeybee nectaring in a flower and            forsythia bloomed in december this year and

don’t know what this will mean for them in spring the blooms I mean but rats            that have eaten all our trash will have to find

a new trash to eat now won’t they of this I feel fairly certain —            inside the house there is yelling from the living room         yelling from the kitchen            there is yelling

from the dining room too perhaps the house is on fire but I will not stir —            I will cozy here in this chair in the dark

like the bee in his unbloomed yellow petals with nowhere to take the pollen I will

not worry so much about the crackling or the heat this chair is made of

flame-resistant fabric anyway this hair is made of flame-resistant me too I am flame I am resistant

Kinship

Why do I love a stone house                     the roof blown off                 seagulls nesting     in the fireplace?

We can be in the house and still see the sky.
 

Today the sky is flat and so is the sea              but memory ripples like tin —

it’s not that I want to be stone      or the chisel that cut it      or the prisoner’s chain      whose rough noise became a friend:
 

so, after struggle comes beauty, if you believe in that sort of thing.
 

My mother, fearing the reverse     said secret thanksgivings     when her children were born     with mouths too wide         and eyes a little too small.

An old crane, blue and orange with rust —                  A new egg, green and brown, speckled —
 

Let’s lie        and leave the sad parts out.