Repent
Elyse Fenton
| poetry
The dumb thing I said keeps coming
back to dismantle my house, poor dredged
brain with its banging doors and hinges
halved to sheer the sky. Swallows traffic
the opposite way to the chimney, orange
construction cones lift toward some secondary
heaven. Air turns back from smoke
to air. Big chain-link mouth, big weeping
tongue: sutures only temporarily intact.
If I know I have my whole life both loved
and spoken with precisely the wrong
kind of restraint why stop now, water
rising against the sill, blue tarp flagellating
roof beams with its last good wing?
Elyse Fenton is the author of the award-winning poetry collection, Clamor. Her second manuscript, Sweet Insurgent, won the PSA’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Prize. She lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.