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On The Way To Shabriz


by aksania xenogrette


fingers between cobbles for holding fingers for mortar when parapets crumble 

fingers for holding the bricks these stones cut with fingers for folding stones that 

fit like knuckles in the cradle of fingers with kneecaps sleeping they know not 

where kneecaps they sleep in folds of legs like knuckles sleeping in the lovers 

palm what names are there for these things where do these words sleep in the 

palms hollow the fingertips loops and whorls lost somehow in these riverbeds of 

skin someplace behind your ear where my fingers travel before my lips in search 

of paradise where given word went in search with haunted eyes my fingertips 

wandered each alike to a place that had no name yet they sent word to my lips 

grown old and certainly blind from whittling the tips of compass points they held 

true through oceans of hair your tangles of logic my lips grew ears to unfold 



these dead letters for you...  and then they withdrew...

something happened on the way to shabriz... 

my fingertips fell on their knees.
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