![]() Despy Boutris's writing has been published in Copper Nickel, American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Currently, she serves as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, Guest Editor for Palette Poetry and Frontier, and Editor-in-Chief of The West Review. BLOODTEETH
I went blackberry-picking, looked down at my index finger, & watched a wound bloom with blood. To compare this plasma to a flowering thing: amaryllis, orchid, chrysanthemum. To memorize creases, freckles, the sight of the thorn finding its way into flesh. All day, the breeze burns my ears, eyes blurring at the sight of sunlight filtering through oak branches, that golden color unbearable, the haze hard to believe as fable. My mother organizes her top-drawer & finds a box of my teeth. My mother tells me love never lasts, a river dissolving into a ravine with parched rocks. Nothing left to drink. I call my father to say I dreamt I swam the span of the Pacific, fled from everything I know. He reminds me my name is mythic—body built for saltwater, memory spanning centuries, trident still stuck in my spine. & what do we really have to count on but the sea, water, the light of the sun turning on the city? Hands made stiff from the cold, distant smoke rising, the scent of anise in the air.
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