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Lauren Camp

Every Misstep. Another first time, like the rest, and I bend

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to tie his rotten laces. The soft ribbon fraught
without reason. Clean socks, I instruct, though he wants them

reeking of the week. Yellowed
toes, all that

moisture, most likely thriving
fungal infection. I have already started to fix an expression. He justifies

his hollowed purpose, caresses

the cotton weave. People stroll past
with the intensity

of sweat. In the beginning all I wanted was to seize
my father’s ripening—clean it.

Jays bang the window. His face

can’t do more than go on unknown          I am still
the same girl who stayed resolute at the throne

of his dank          defenses           Complained
his oppositional triumphs       He keeps repeating

his need as           anything that can be          worn  The future

closes my eyes     The socks are
fine                          There is no end     to agreement


Protection

A meditation on Agnes Martin

On the path, flexible droplets
rib moss and branches,
clutch any libation.
This then is what I fix to, this hillside.

My goal is to dress
each day with the inside
of hours and the next shallow
moment—
her thin paper edged with lack and brink,
the shaky lead coming along
without argument
every direction. I feel that to be quiet
is to hear the size
of a conversation between lazy grasses—: I keep looking

at a chair in the meadow and now
what I’ve learned is the view
drains back to featureless
and I am calm
as she’d ever manage to be.

What if my work is to let
the mind take to the winnow
and linger? Squirrels zipper
to upper branches. I notice the sky to be
edgeless. This is all so simple,
my eye to the coffee cup
on the counter
that holds a slight daisy
turning outward.


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