I never sent you that letter that I told you to look out for, by David Greenspan

Our heads were full of yogurt
during those years
of rain and warm rot

–

We didn’t pay much attention
to the mudbleat
hiding in our chests

–

We drank grapefruit juice
and watched squirrels
chase each other

–

You didn’t look at me
stuffed as I was
with glass

–

When milk spoiled
and winter was bright,
we talked about
the body’s coarse leak

–

O the beautiful shapes
our mouths made to speak

–

Anne, in her nervous voice,
told me that smoking
was something like
my awful rowing towards god

–

Mary, in her nettled voice,
told me that the anxieties
of spring would come

–

We were all of us swallowing
pieces of skin, pieces
of crumbling morning

–

The sky opened its throat
and poured over us

–

We stood in a yard
crowded with dogwood
blooms and the bones
of small fish

–

You: honeyed fever
Me: rhubarb meat

*

David Greenspan is an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and serves as Promotions Editor for Slope Editions. His poems have appeared in places like BathHouse Journal, Laurel Review, New South, The Southeast Review, The Sonora Review, and others.