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A dead body leaned sideways against a wall. Its eyes were open.

Neither fame nor wealth could provide consolation for life’s brevity.

My love swims you, your shoulders like hard sails under the green curls.

She wears her nakedness like it has been woven from air.

In that world I was a fish too eager to enter the nets; here, I’m a river.

What’s left is a thumbhouse, an inch of gristle inside skin walls.

What will we do without exile, and a long night that stares at the water?

The waves of laughters breach an inlet of cumulus and I’m excited.

God was surrounding the chair, leaves flourishing from a sickly tree.

Corn repeats itself into a haze of tassels and sheaving leaves.

You can stand on the edge and tremble with fear or risk your life.

If life is an open vein, what’s brave about a sleeve-heart, sweetheart?

I want to sleep in a bed next to a man who won’t dream of me all night.

My “lonelymaking.” Also known as my horrible secret, continent-wide.

After you have read all you possibly can there may be a few lines left.

Just because we have birds inside us, we don’t have to be cages.

Even this says nothing of your desire—to be put to use.

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Your words will strike her heart like Saint Teresa’s flaming arrow.

In the many pages of the book of love this is only one story.

The world seemed newly made and filled with a frightening silence.

I repeated the name thoughtfully, then said no, I didn’t think I knew her.

The portal light, on your face, now, a rose light on a sinking freighter.

The sense all along has been that there’s some madness in her.

I don’t know you, I only think of you to ignore how unhappy I am.

Let me lie down with you and listen, let me tell you what I know.

We could use our arms to squeeze or hold or load not a gun, not a gun.

She takes her hand to my scalp: eyes close as if tasting lemon cake.

When the population was whiter, they fawned over the Korean.

The kissed fingerpad touched wet with wine orbiting.