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Come, Calamity

Render tender the shoots

of evening, let us in the lettuce

 

light, fitful as fish pumping

fistfuls of razored air, jagged

 

saws: tsk-tsk, cut-cut. Gleaners

in the gloaming—fuck that.

 

I was starving and far too far

from any lavender heroics.

 

There’s a moment when

you realize the beloved baby’s

 

milky paste has long since

turned to shit, another when

 

the smell of any man fills

the closed-off room.

 

Many a time called in by dark,

called in by storm, I knew

 

full well who it was I comforted.

Little other breathing, nothing

 

to do but shape myself around you

like a shell in the ordinary night.