Aleph

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by Leslie Grollman

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  –the way we could fly
                     before the tethering
 
I, the first step     the town’s pleas
 
   the pen  the paper
                      and the seeds,
                          being the seeds
 
           I, a faceless hand
 
    I, a white buffalo’s birth
                        I, the prayer mat, unravelling
                 being so cold
 
      I,  the mast and the moans from below
                    did nothing save    send the pain to sea                                       
                    didn’t you   feel it too
 
 
  I,   the rain in the desert            and the desert
 
            being unkind
 
I,   afterbirth of a fowl:    the wet of potential
 
                 I,  the song you sang on my fifth birthday
                    the one you couldn’t on my sixth
 
 
   I, the wooden plank you walked
                 the roots, thirsty
       being that taste
                   and, I
 
               I, an aleph
 
hearing the door closing
             being the door
 
   dimming
 
                 I, the roof of a mountain
I, the static of snowfall
          the snowfall, singing
 
 
 
                I, the towel, dropping
 
being the scar        the scarred being
 
     the tender        the wine
                        those words
 
 
           I,   being
 
               I,     not being
 
 
       I,
             flowers, wilding the mountain

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Leslie Grollman’s work appears in pidgeonholes, Psaltery & Lyre, Cordite Poetry Review, bath magg, Streetcake, Sweet Lit, Ellipsis Zine, Moist Poetry Journal, Writing Utopia 2020 Anthology, Thimble, Nailed, elsewhere and is forthcoming in NiftyLit. Leslie was shortlisted for The Surreal and Strange: Prose Poetry Competition 2022. She was chosen to be a reader for an Octopus Books’ reading period. Leslie earned an MSc Creative Writing, Poetry, with Distinction, from the University of Edinburgh in 2020 at age 70.

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