Cache
 by Josh Booton

Like a man rises to greet his life
at sunrise, the line of sky lifting into
light, and thinks of a woman
he had once, how she lifted for him
so slowly her skirt, and what came after.
Today, he’ll plummet into love
with every woman he meets, with a man
raising the gate of his bodega,
with eyelids even.  Anything
that opens opens him.  Until later.
Until lunch maybe, when he’s walking
past the steaming food carts longing
for perogies from this little Polish diner
that went under a few years ago,
potatoes and onions folded into dough,
so simple, so impossible to perfect,
and he wants suddenly only
perfection, to keep walking forever
or to fold himself beneath his bed sheets
and imitate oblivion. Like above him,
those lazy doves decorating the trees,
each head tucked beneath a wing.  Strange
to think such a white thing can carry
even a spoonful of darkness.  But it must.

Raleigh Review
501(c)(3) Nonprofit 
EIN: 27-2644341
ISSN: 2169-3943​ 
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