What is desire
As when listening to a story, children always want to knowthe next thing before sleep until they wake and the morning becomesancient, so too those beginning at love first ask, Is it real?—and then years later,Was it a memory?—only to stare at a vast middle growing, openingat their feet, the river of language. To be awakened to each word’sminnow-pulse, the salt-scent of humannoise, breath, texts, old letters—the rapids and eddies of stories,poems. The three words of a dead father’s fadedink kept folded in a wallet: Giving is having, the dividedtrochees’ out-breath unending. The bird flying within each of uswhose wings are hands, the hands of words joining people,ages in a sentence growing toward its end, leadingtoward the next one in a brief waking like youth—the day and night…
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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, November/December 2023