Thrush Poetry Journal
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Jamison Crabtree

upturn the stones to draw out the night; flush the moon from out of the bushes;

Strangle me with your hair. Get close.
Now. Put your tongue somewhere

new. Remember by taste; you must―
because it was never a secret:

whatever you place in your mouth
will leave you. Your breath,

for example. For example, the mirror―
it fogs at the slightest threat of a kiss

and glares when it catches you, mid-stare,
from across any uncrowded room.

Take it (give it) for granted. Her heels
were slanted pink; dust swept

from the steppe of her thighs.
The mirror lets us watch the past,

the slight delay as light batters our skin. If you look,
do so kindly; what is there is what is gone.




Jamison Crabtree is a Black Mountain Institute Ph.D. fellow at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. His work can be found in 
Hayden’s Ferry Review, Handsome, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere.




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