Flare

to empty

the cache
between breath and breathe;

copse of trees hiding the corpse
of a red

not wheelbarrow
not valentine

but fox, rust-
fur graying as this unkind weather picks away

hip bone & shank pushing
the turnstile

propellant me,
matchstick struck

brief flare, dazzle, sizzle,
fizzle . . .

***

Karen Neuberg’s chapbook, “Detailed Still”, was published by Poets Wear Prada Press in 2009. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Memoir (and), decomP, Rose & Thorn, and The Same, among others. She’s an associate editor for Inertia Magazine and for First Literary Review-East.

Read also Try Attaching Sensation to the Figure of Memory.