I want to gather you like the accordion folds of a long dress
Around my wrists and run.
If you ask where, I say, breathless,
—The comfort & justice of an open field.

I want to hide you like the tender Seder bread
Our little fingers suspend over the plate,
For each plague, drip
“Blood (splash) frogs (splash) darkness”

Or, if you prefer, there is a place
In the slats of the granary
Where only the barn owl flashes its Oriental face
A slashed geode

You could hide there
The moon slit in half tonight—it reaches out
For spheres of fullness in the mist—No—
It is not just what you endure

She is casting into the rafters dark rainbows
Prisms in wood—the gauzy wings glitter over moon;
It is all my heart passing hopefully
Through your radiant—
very radiant, need.

Emily Stout is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana English Program. She works nights as a registered nurse in the oncology deparment of a Midwestern hospital. 

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Published in the October 10, 2014 issue: View Contents

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