Linn Frank
Green
The grass leaves marks on my skin like wishbones.
I think “luster” and “I’d like to be covered in frogs.”
I feel the soft spot on a newborn’s head… a fingertip‐sized heart wrapped in glassine.
I think “the man weeding the field is fluent in Japanese…”
I go smashing against glass, but I don’t die...
I like abrasive… I can hardly resist this tub of poison ivy…
I think “I could walk for hours.” There is a quiet like extinct species.
In the shade I see saturated shades of growth. And it’s all so soft and thick and reptilian...
I stop. I kneel down on the butterflies.
They circle in the hours... the air is still, a goldfish in a pond.
I think “a palm of light presses on my thigh…”
Letter
You should have seen the world this morning. It curved around the block like a porch.
Everything lost its archer focus and arched down to the ground in a lacquered likeness of rain.
The trees reached to touch their shoulders. The houses fell to their knees, flour fell in the folds
of the floor. You folded your arms like maps, and the maps took themselves back to their
countries, took their soldiers back to the water. The water washed them on your back and they
ran down your spine and held your moles prisoners. A song rode by on a bicycle, it rode past
the ants whirlpooling in a rosary. It sang: “Rosemary, after the rain the river still rains under the
trees.”
I'm lucky because I carry many souvenirs with me, gifts from friends. Among them are a a silver earring from Gabon, a stone from the Mojave desert, a foulard from India, a green painted card, a tooth, a turnip, a note written on saltine cardboard. The other day I found a tiny black and white photograph of a Japanese family in an antique store in Oaxaca. How did it get here? I wonder, so far from home.