Two Poems

September–October 2013 • 49 cover feature White Body Radiation Every day adjustments before give up before make do start where a clothespin clips a nose and breath is held until – What is a thing of beauty if it isn’t us? And if a body is hell what then? And if one can’t bear to look back at the sight of what one has come for then the other, the retrieved, just keeps waltzing toward light. Right? Is six paces back far enough to dance? Is it enough? Wait – Listen. Remember when we used to sing together? Zeroth Law When leaning on the backyard beam beneath a full wolf moon and my slippers shiver under my nightdress as I happen upon a reason for waking call it a snowflake a belly-flop blue jay or even my own small toe peeking through a not-yet hole as it fissures into my slipper’s future and I’m not out for a jog or to find a misplaced piece of scoundrel lover but to marry my morning coffee to a cigarette to a new blue-gray light an icy pacific year in mid-set See how they swinghold hands and raise the sun? Hey, you! Bluebird! Whatever will we do – exhale – with all of these merciful gifts? Samiya Bashir’s work has recently appeared in Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, Crab Orchard Review, Cura, The Rumpus, Callaloo, and Encyclopedia F–K (vol. 2). Her most recent book of poems, Gospel, was a finalist for both the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and, along with her first collection, Where the Apple Falls, the Lambda Literary Award. Two Poems Samiya Bashir

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