I want the makeshift bridge, rickety
splintered wood planks, the missing
ones like knocked-out teeth, banister
ropes with slack smiles, the sway
and push back of each step. I want
the rock-worn, unpaved road,
the unmarked trail, gnarled trees
and tangled grass. I want the uncrested
wave, its blue unfrothed top,
and the broken shell under blankets
of sand, the crab circling the seafloor
on one leg waiting for the other
to grow back. I want the manic spiral
of my hair on a humid day, the frizz
that coils like antennae to whatever
frequency it finds. The chipped tooth,
the detached nail, the split ends,
calloused feet and unpainted toes. I want
to walk the rough edges of day, to wake
hours before sunrise in the unfinished
dream as it echoes and fades, to sit
in the conversation without closure,
in the half-written song, in the half-heard
heart, on the edge of a broken lip, in the thick
stutter of the incomplete word, in the dip-
thong before it rises, in the note reaching
for pitch, in the mind’s miasma shooting
thought-stars to the cracked synapse, and listen.
Author Bio: Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of the chapbooks Maria Sings (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press) and The Living Ruin (Finishing Line Press). Recent poems have appeared in Pleiades, Southern Poetry Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Poetry East, MiPOesias, and elsewhere. A graduate of NYU’s MFA program in Creative Writing-Poetry, Catherine is cofounder and curator of the SWWIM reading series. She lives in Miami Beach with her husband, two sons, and daughter.
