desertification
Chaim ben Avram
gnats stop—our yard edges
the desert cropping up in your field
of vision.
—I eye its well
by hand, lower myself
into the brine lake clouding your juvenile eyes
—I bring my ear to the blacktop
of a playground in ruin
the rustle of poison ivy I confuse
for an impending tsunami—I tremble with the war cry
—of geological cycles.
tell me, when did you start to prefer the company of water
to me in your dreams?
Chaim ben Avram is a writer whose poetry appears in Denver Quarterly, Oxford Poetry, RHINO, Tin House, and West Branch. A more extensive archive can be found at cbavram.com.
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