conVERSE

By Ashley L. Gong

Lighthouse

Increasingly now, the lighthouse parts
dark wings and a single stream of light
trickles through like a blade flashed
through the night. I wandered among

the sea, bobbed among crevices and ducked
my dull head under piers which crawled
with shiny lichen and a fish broken off from schools
of thought or spurned off a wave’s back.

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Bloodline

The cars move so fast and uniform almost
as if an invisible bloodline strings through their wheels
and slips the whole industrial necklace forward,
air beaded between glass and metal.

On the way to Allston, we changed tires
only because the old ones were clogged
with ambrosial gasoline, and we couldn’t drink
enough to replace the taste of cheap wine.

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Object Permanence II

A boat is there if you still believe in the ocean,

and a country remains if you lie still enough

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Object Permanence

The light was dark, so I twisted a moth

between my fingers, and its wings

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Mother

Forgive my tongue. Slack as eel,
spilling vowels like stray specks

of sea—slimy and unintelligible.
Mass of gray. Overhead, gulls

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