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DEAR SUKI: NUMBER SIXTEEN
Dear Suki: Ebro Valley, October 2nd,
my aches so greased with dew-fitted
stealth of wind that I cannot sleep.
Here, where your truancy cascaded
like pinched cheekbones, I fed alone
with contours as proverbial bladder-
wrack sluiced in turfs. October was
unfurled, braying at the outskirts of
autumn's quilt; piteous cold poured
ghosts in my tea cup; smoke curved
and halting as the metronome of the
nameless things ticked on. Fog skied
above an army of cork oak's boughs
like bestial fleet of cicadas. Beneath,
I stood fixed in the powdering of pale
tears trickling down into the pores of
my hands, courteous in their entropic
lament. I may keep company with red
winged birds, waiting for the heavens
to turn blue, coating in glissando of
buckthorns and dwarf junipers—the
latitude of it all will pile like shadows
and the half-light, wrestling me back-
ward as I go.