With all my thoughts I went out
into the world, and there you were—
my word-gulper, my double-barrelled
but. We returned, a penumbra.
Forget that everything died
until we broke.
Everything slept, everything stopped.
The smallest sun came drifting, dark.
A soul and a soul confronted us, clouded
with imperial affliction, shrieked
out of orbit, like the moon
when two mouths open
straining—still
a breath descended to the earth
and that which made us, was it
(was it not) unnamed?
–
Abra Bertman lives in Amsterdam where she teaches English literature at the International School of Amsterdam. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Citron Review, Rust + Moth, Slipstream, and WomanArts Quarterly Journal, among others. Abra was nominated for the Best of the Net in 2016.