LILY HERMAN

Anniversary

Buttoned without reprieve into my jumpsuit
the way you were nailed without nails
into your coffin, I tie our car
with tin cans and inscribe
JUST BURIED
above the bumper

There is nothing now but where we started
and this: Heat working mercenarily
against the eye, making a mistake
of desert or sea, an easterly wind
assaulting a building
which alternates generationally
toward and away from God

The story of a day is
He met and married his wife
The story of that day is
sausage emerging monstrous
from a sieve, the affair which doesn’t
cut even conceptually to the quick
A how-to guide about keeping
the lights on in love
after its body has gone
into the earth and come up again
in bloom
Imagined paradise
meeting imagined purple

A seat at the garden’s edge
I didn’t know I was vowing
to take for all time
Searching by eye
for the scent of soil rising

Lily Herman is a writer, bruiser at BRUISER, and co-editor (with Caroline Preziosi) of NAVIGATIONS. Her zine, SPREE, is available through BRUISER, and she is currently writing her first romance novel, for the romantics. More publications and contact are available at lilyjherman.com.