Pathfinder
take 1. Providence. Bless this house.
Like the mattress that lost my footing, it fell
to block the light and breeze that bred the skit
in the first place. Darkness so quick
that lumbering beneath something enormous is
unlearned with one inhale, one full breath of busted steam.
Or one of mattress underside, dank from the leaky spot,
the leak that okays our desire to sleep
to more than the pacemaking clock,
the river outside and larger than this house
or the wet sill and cataract pane that turns
headlights to planets. For what forces
itself in—water from where—and what ends up here
on my side of the bed. The Woonasquatucket,
This is luck. I really have something here. Love,
love. Wake up, it’s starting again. Woonasquatucket.
In our bed. I want your side. Move over.
It’s raining. Move.
take 2. Woonasquatucket sing-song
Cells, and closeness of the Earth becoming
smaller past the evening news. And cooler.
The cats gurgle on my window sill and yours,
sniff the stripped grouper, gassed fat inside
our warm galactic kitchen lights, these warm
galactic kitchen nights. Fluorescent wand above
the sink winks, snapshoots the fruit bowl,
pewter flask and silver-plated loose-limbed
corkscrew: one arm raised and one strait-
jacketed. The sponge dries. We sleep,
my hand on the shoulder blade that made
you, dragging the skin just slightly so
we steady—my fingers and your pinch
of skin. This is always, Love. Someone sees
something and takes it. This
is always love.
Laurie Soslow is a graduate of the Boston University Creative Writing Program. She has spent most of the last eight years providing IT and management consulting services to nonprofit organizations. Laurie's work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Mad Poets Review, HiNgE, the Drexel Online Journal and the Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. Laurie resides in Philadelphia, where she co-curates the INVERSE Reading Series on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. (lsoslow@yahoo.com)