Alex Chertok
for FL
On so wisp a craft less in than
hanging off the sky—think back
to Ithaca, Kroch library, 2012, when I was
again a lung no longer roped to the windpipe
before speaking to her whatever were those
first windswept words.
The world can end with a swallow's wing, a finger's
single exhale on the throttle, the bare mouth's
one wrong word, really any
wild dread choking the blades
but she spoke back. You see what the heart
beaten by all that height to a pulp
can open into? She spoke
back. So the world can also begin.