Reluctant Gravities 1

She tries to draw a strength she dimly feels out of the weakness she knows, as if predicting an element in the periodic table. He wants to make a flat pebble skim across the water inside her body. He wonders if, for lack of sky, it takes on the color of skin or other cells it touches. If it rusts the bones. [4]

He has put a pebble under his tongue. While her lips explode in conjectures his lisp is a new scale to practice. He wants his words to lift, against the added odds, to a truth outside him. In exchange, his father walking down the road should diminish into a symbol of age. [5]

And my body slopes toward yours no matter how level the ground. [11]

And when I say your name, do I draw water, a portrait, curtain, bridge, or conclusion? [15]

Waldrop, Rosmarie. Reluctant Gravities. New Directions, 1999. ISBN: 0811214281.