a poet

in Prague you stand naked with a body and a cigarette; you blend in with the sky but you are not the sky. you are something bigger. you won’t know it until later but you will become the custodian of things greater, weaker, softer; you are the keeper of the holy dove, and this work is invisible. you knead until your fingers bleed, pooling toward the hunger of a thing whose want is too late, but whose bloodlet started early. whose stars closed to night’s swift movement. you are the one who walks the poet down the plank, who readies the sea. in gardens you are the stamen but you are not the statue. stoic you stand but we all know the truth: you must be a natural thing to love the poet, to funnel light through a girl’s bad marrow. the grass bows at your feet, but your work is the song of the open palm, feeding a thing that is not strong enough to go unfed. vessel of hand, of hallelujah, how you move through the day with that albatross, and how that creature loves you.

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine—a digital diary of literature, magical living and idea. She is the author of Light Magic for Dark Times, a collection of rituals and practices for self-care, as well as a few poetry collections: Nympholepsy, Apocryphal and more. She has written for The New York Times, Narratively,Grimoire Magazine, Sabat Magazine, The Establishment, Entropy,The Atlas Review, and more.