Lesle Lewis

Lesle Lewis

Wowed

The contradicting of progressive tenses begins.

Forget sense and get it right, all the glory and dark of it, the color gray of it, the space between it and its name.

We are looking for the word for where our bodies begin and end, where our minds begin and end.

Are we are going to Boston?

After bushwhacking for hours, we are disappointed to come out on a familiar road.

Is this not familiar?

It’s not.

Our guests arrive and we are already sloshed.

I say it and thereby give the problem to you.

We leave each other messages, but we rarely put our arms around each other.

No one taught us how.

What if I said I’m sorry?

That I made a six hundred page mistake?

I made squares around only the easy things.

And now my heart folds flat out like a map.

And I tape my standing woman assemblage to the wall.

It isn’t like anything not to be.

We just fall into water.

We go to the zoo.

The fox says, “I’m a fox.”

The gorilla family is depressed.

We see everything.

Behind Walgreens for example.

We’re not wowed by it.

Lesle Lewis is the author of five poetry collections, including A Boot’s a Boot and Rainy Days on the Farm, and two forthcoming: John’s Table and Survival of the Fittest Pronoun.