by Lilly Merrill
untitled #1
All at once it occurs to me, about the bruising.
I am observably upright again, on the lawn
Having guided the mower through dog shit an hour ago
(as good a reason as any to give up on an afternoon).
I’m hailed, inept Groundskeeper! and turn;
A smile, a joint, his baffling capacity for mercy.
The Caretaker, truly, for thirteen years,
Older even than our hale blind dog.
I remember you trying to distract me,
A guessing game, a survey,
Admitting an affinity for the number thirteen.
I’ve filed it away, desperate just now to amass a new archive;
Motes of knee-jerk revulsion
Which won’t be permitted to turn over on themselves
And drift up and around
Towards endearment.
It's the duration!
I am endlessly going over, perennially
susceptible to The Over-Valent Idea (what if, if only!)
Endlessly gone over, wee hours at a time.
Unusual wear and tear
At clipped refractory intervals,
Marked up time on my chest for weeks.
provincial blues
A doll in Billy Mark’s
told me to
tell him to
take me
to Florence—
oooh like a grand tour!!
She’s off to Staten Island
And I, still with no passport.
I know I’m just scared to
confront that
the intricacies,
the delicacy, of the
hulking Old World
might be wasted on me.
And right here’s more than
enough rarifying nausea,
black and blonde
wood and polished concrete,
hotels where it’s known—
shit, everybody’s been to
Europe but me.
Lilly Merrill is white-knuckling it in the woods of New Hampshire, dashing things off on X @ironhandslil and finally trying things at ironhandslil.substack.com