Tricia Yost

THE NEW CHRONOLOGY

 

 

Today, snow in a place that never snows.

 

Today, she thinks all we have are moments that string together,

aging muscle fibers layered, pulling over joints, drawing two parts close.

This small act repeated is what constitutes a life.

 

Yesterday she heard, Keep lust the size of an elephant.

 

She thought of a lover’s words:

A week ago I couldn’t pick your walk out of a crowd.

 

On days when tenderness fails, she considers

when she has reached without thought of consequence.

 

She coaches herself, Don’t hesitate.

 

When she fails in this too she looks at the pink scar

from a chicken pock bloomed and lifted on the flesh

like the open face of a broken peony.

 

She learned early Descartes was wrong. To feel is to be,

though the sensation claims too much.

 

Everything becomes available at the near pace of immobility.

 

She imagines she will never know herself and soon will see her face

small and distorted in a nurse’s eyes as her kind hands massage

the arthritic knuckles of her dying body.

 


Tricia Yost is the author of First Things (March Street Press), other work has appeared in journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Smartish Pace, Prairie Schooner, Borderlands, Clackamas Literary Review, Syllogism, Hurricane Alice, Booglit, and Ice-Floe. Tricia lives and works in the Seattle area.

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