Michelle Lewis

Sonnet for Rivulet

What does asunder mean. When they want me to reveal you
I say you are a ruckus in the trees that bends my attention.
Sometimes I hoard your scattering in my eyes, sometimes every
joint heavens. What protects the knight? One says armor, one says
sword. I paid my debtors in sap, mealed with them unmetaled.
Rubbed raw, I was ready to let anyone. Passed around my palms
before undressing. Then my mouth became a passage to an
amber city that took some lack away. How did we live in so
many rooms, the hoariest of histories. Our past shingles itself
until at last it roofs me and here is the truth it shelters. Do you
want to see the heck of it? Do you want to see what my closet
looks like? I plan to live unfenestrated there. Tethered to its
dresses, I will be ready for the earth you’ve parted. To make
the ground’s furrowing my with. To be finally floored by it. 

Michelle Lewis

Michelle’s poetry has recently appeared or will appear in Bennington Review, Indiana Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and The Feminist Wire, among others. She is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Who Will Be Frenchy? (dancing girl press, Fall 2016). Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Electric Lit, and Drunken Boat.

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