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X Is Yellowing Down
by Paige Lewis

​losing his softness.   He  threatens to take all the air   with him when he goes. I've  never   been much good at igniting   tenderness, I often fight sad with worse sad, and using the bone of one whale to harpoon another isn't beautiful.    Sensual—certainly not. Now  hot-wristed,  he claims  glass-bottomed bridges  last so     long     because   courage   is    a dwindling human trait. I used to believe that     if I was slapped hard enough   my eyes would pop out. Believed    too   that   a      calculated hair tug   could rear them back into their rightful sockets.  X drags his latches  toward me—a test    to see if
I will   unfasten.  His bags are heavy with our garden's brightest stones because, he says,  even the crows should    be     left   with        nothing.

​​Paige Lewis is the author of the chapbook Reasons to Wake You (Tupelo Press, 2018). Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Best New Poets 2017, and elsewhere. 
​​Read more...
December 2017
St. Francis Disrobes by Paige Lewis
ISSN 2157-8079
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