the net collapsed around us
fibers of rope burned our skin

where was that old stove
the one you wrote about
or was it me

the class clapped as you read
your long machine
would you call it automatic

the algorithm of your evenings
or do I misremember

the time we read Barthes
pages from Jabès

was that pleasure that you gave
the back of the neck a place to settle
or was it bliss

the paper cuts around us
fibers fixing on the pen

when did you write me out
the margins stretching
then folding over—

where do you keep
all our blood-red ink
made black

 

—
Marie Landau is an editor at the University of New Mexico Press and a member of Dirt City, an Albuquerque-based literary collective. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Red Paint Hill Poetry Journal, Yellow Chair Review, SOFTBLOW, Bird’s Thumb, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.