Europe
It’s impossible to make a promise to yourself
it’s impossible to look at yourself
if you know this
in the old and new churches and even in
the Christian Science Reading Rooms I always thought got me
I can take my pulse and it’s strong
The lane with the hedges – the lamb
the tremor of Paddington, the terrifying vista, the fog,
the dogs set free on the Downs
not nearly as much as my electric companion who had a soul
So my bunk robust promise I pledge now again
in a stuffed vacuum
in a void full of star shit
in a nest of dust to get
regurgitated into the sleeping eggs
in the silk spider dust of a knot of bugs
That’s where I pledge my swear, darling man,
in the putrid gone future
in the lost future I felt
where once I stood in a roofless market,
scanning, scared, the red peppers
Emily Toder is the author of Science (Coconut Books, 2012) and the chapbooks No Land (Brave Men Press, forthcoming 2014), Brushes With (Tarpaulin Sky, 2010), and I Hear a Boat (Duets, 2010). Her next collection, Beachy Head, is due out from Coconut in 2014. A graduate of the MFA Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she also holds degrees in Literary Translation and Library Science. She lives in Brooklyn.
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