30 July 2009 | Vol. 9, No. 2
Duality
Because we stash words
in our temporal lobes
in pairs—best friend with dog,
dog with cat, catatonia with last Friday, fried
eggs with broken plate—
we see associations before we say them:
platitude with hurricane, cantilever
with out on a limb. But I digress,
would not connect liminal
with your back in bed in summer.
This is not to say that somewhere
could not follow armadillo—
that jumps when it's alarmed
not knowing the difference
between rattlesnake and pickup.
We know between sideswipe
and sidestep, soft shoe and the shoe
that drops. Your temporal
lobe lit red, Can I and hesitation,
I answer come. And home.
About the author:
Karen Schubert's chapbook The Geography of Lost Houses (2008) was published by Pudding House, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Redactions, the Mayo Review, Slant, Willows Wept Review, and ragazine. In 2008, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology. She is a recent editor of Whiskey Island Magazine. A visiting writer at Texas A&M Commerce, she has eaten handcrafted lasagne with her Italian housemates.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Karen Schubert at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 9, No. 2, where "Duality" ran on July 30, 2009. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
