Ghazal: The night undresses and

Jenna Bazzell

the moon lacquers the cloud shelf, the blooming weight
of crape myrtles. Fog pools. The telephone cables wait

for hawks to perch, to resemble what has passed: lonely
like the dead in the earth, like roots of saw grass waiting

for something else. Until then, I’ll remember I belong
to a family where loss looms inside grief with the weight

of utter ruin, of hail-battered foxglove collapsing. I pray
to what I am not: a cloud of gnats, a womb. My body waits,

wants to slip between mistakes. The hours filled with plumes
of smoke, the volume of fingernails. The unremarkable weight

of a glass door sliding shut. A mouth opening. For the room
to cave in, to stop raining. For tonight’s tight ball of red weight

to burrow inside me. Let it consume me. Let it smell
like burning plastic fumes. Tell me: What am I waiting

for here I haven’t for before? To resume tilling up old
stones, training legume runners. How long must I wait

to be forgiven? Instead, another gloomy day, another
broken broom handle, an empty jar to be weighted

against the dark. Your mouth is not a dead moon. A fawn
attempts to stand assuming it is able to hold up its own weight.

Issue 9, 2017, pg. 44