Naked Island
 

Before she opens her eyes, she smells sharp spruce on the shore of her bed.
Leaving him sleeping, she rises to make rich, black coffee.
The wind turns slightly and the blue sheets shiver.
She offers him the mug in return for a glance at her belly. He rubs a foot along her thigh.
Soon, like a pigeon guillemot, he begins to unfold, a spiral against sheets of wind.
The coffee in his cup grows cold; an oily sheen rises.
She feels the wind shift, smells the coming tide, tries to hold back the light.
He rises anyway, above the interest of her bed, moves away from her tightly furled self.
She watches him go, as she knew he would, his body lost against the edge of her sea.

Emily Wall 

 Take this cup; I offer it to you 
 without malice—only with the proviso 
 that you stop cutting holes 
 in the pages of my books 
 and marking out the endings with ink. 
 With you (capital I) standing on the margin, 
 throwing shadows on my pages, 
 I cannot make sense of Connie’s flowers 
 or Bertha’s candlesticks. There is only you 
 staring down the words, leaving ash trails 
 where you have burned them: 
 little infernos. 

 Don’t think I didn’t see you slip 
 back into that sentence, 
 wringing it through rollers, 
 then disappear into the green wallpaper, 
 all around me now—caught. 

 So you might as well come down. 
 Take the cup and fill it with your devil’s   tools: 
 scissors and pills, whiteout and erasers. 
 Take it all with you. 
 Once you are gone 
 I will build a bed of canvases 
 and stitch a blanket of paper. 
 I will lie down and wait 
 for the women to return 
 with their words and paint. 
 And I will be able to say 
 I was saved by art. 
 

     Alexis Easley