Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2011 v10n1
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EVE JONES

Between

Atonement is our kitchen window
the world falls through sleepless

and wild, tiny slaughters
lining the yard. How memory lies

like the moon: silkrose from a distance,
shot by dream, a child lifted into

next year and the next. You write of Spain’s white-
moth hill, the caves, and between us

an ocean same as the moon, sheer belief.
My desire rolls like a blind man in the side yard.

Tell me you carry it dustily up streets,
the little church, the saint head blooming

in a box. Our street, named for a woman and the wind,
terrible gifts of history—

I remember. Leaving,
your face was the smallest ever, the weather

in a rose. And then
the earth’s soft grind through

the keyhole, quiet between
the foot and the still-flapping wing.

One story of love is the story of the cliff
and the ship that tries

over and
over like

snow at night, the bride unfolding forever in a black
limousine.  end


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