Letitia Trent
Give
It always sounds sad
to give up or in or out. Always
sad, climbing into somebody else’s
disheveled bed. Can’t sleep
though you can’t do anything else
and the car wheels’ splats
sound through the glass. So it’s
supposed to mean collapsed. Burst
spokes and popping your filling
in a caramel apple. Too many
mouthfuls and now you can’t
do without them. It’s supposed
to be sad to give up,
though there’s that good sag and drop.
And sighs
are like that- out, and out,
like getting home late
from work
and easing the tight, laced shoes off,
falling down into the crumby,
change clanking couch.
Supposed to be sad, to give up, or
in, or out, but I say
what about
the cardinal virtue
of benevolence? I’ll give
you my hat, my skirt, my shirt,
my stockings, my salty
and sweet delicates and
then my hand if you’ll give
me a good, ballooning below
me, place to drop.
Skydive
Something small inside your
ribcage pops. It’s not
as urgent as the hand pointing steady
you must choose—
huddle in the grey belly or exit.
You choose. Another
small organ collapses.
Your clothes clap and
the wind crowds your mouth
like a fist.
You imagine a rippling roll
of your skin, hair knocking
in its sockets. You tug,
but don’t slow.
Your bladder presses.
Saltwater tears from your mouth.
But calm down;
you are fine now—
The canvas cracks and snaps your
body back from
the knife drop and flowers.
You feel again
your breath, your mouth
making words like happiness,
and a small patch of pain where
the strap bites your skin.
And those below you, too,
look lovely, landing and collapsing
and still, landing
and collapsing and still.
Bio
Letitia Trent's work has appeared in the Denver Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, and Fence, among others. Her chapbooks are The Medical Diaries (Scantily Clad Press) and Splice (Blue Hour Press). She received her MFA from Ohio State University.