You Want to Lie Down Until the Weather Clears

On sunnier days a guy might admire his shadow
while he stretches between sprints.

A child might run you down with her bike
because your body was there and she panicked,

and that’s all right. It’s the attacker
who really exposes herself.

You have a friend whose smile carves
the bridge of her nose into an estuary

even while she waits expressionless
in her fabric and snaps for the light

to give her its busy figure,
its grass go.

A stub of fennel kicks up
its feathered parts

while the garden becomes
a lean of kale,

bittering blossom, so much
for dinner. The glove palm up

in the frost of a bench,
the glove palm down

in the drip of a stairwell
need matchmakers before

they need hands.
Something in you cries out

to the colors strangers tuck under their chins,
the olives and fuschias,

creams, butters and postal blues.
At a certain distance, anything’s edible.

 

With a line from Bad Boats by Laura Jensen

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KATE LEBO‘s poems and essays have appeared in Best New Poets, The New England Review, The Rumpus, Gastronomica, Willow Springs, and Poetry Northwest. She’s also the author of two books about the folk art of piemaking: A Commonplace Book of Pie (Chin Music Press) and Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour, and Butter (Sasquatch Books). She’s a graduate of the poetry programs at Western Washington University and the University of Washington. For more, visit katelebo.com.