From “In The After”
By Tonya M. Foster
1.
March, like the soldier, through the sonic insistence of breath
Breathe in the minute in the minute in the moment breathe breathe breathe
Body rest Body wrest away the rest, then breathe breathe
Bodies arrested Body rest body wrested body resting in/as recline
Body rest body wrested bodies arrested (those who are loved) body politic is/as de cline
Body rest in each breath in each breathe in breathing
Body rests in each breath we take
Bodies rest in each breath taken by the body politic’s restless decline
Body rest in the sonic soothing of (y)our saying a tongue tenderly tending
Body wrested from its resting in the sonic insistence of our isness
we move through by moving as an unmarshalled we
2.
But if I love you what we are is of consequence each to the morning,
each to the afternoon, and to the evening’s retire
But if I love you, time is immeasureable and irrelevant. There is no easy
accounting of the train’s arrival, of the ship’s docking
But if I love you, you are not drawn as an easy other, conscripted
in the agonies of marketed and marketing brands
Arrival and its possibility are verdant present joys
Leaving and its possibilities are expansive desert joys
But if I love you, you are not me,
and we dance along our incongruous, broken roadways
But if I love you, I will love many in the multiple that I am and that I love