SurVision Magazine / David Centorbi

The Space between Your Sighs

scared me the most. In that stillness, I knew
you hid fingernails and chalkboards.

I knew I couldn't outrun
the sound of that stillness,

and I knew I couldn't stay –
all I had were hands that wouldn't clench.

So I held up the barrel of a dream:

its open eyes wept pardons,
its open mouth spoke forgetting.

I said, "Can you see yourself here?"

And you took my question,

folded into a porcelain nightingale,
threw into the air,

and asked me to watch it
try to fly.

The Cracks of Knowing

on the crying
marble that folded its
eye-filled fingers around
the wet hunger

I felt when I tried to embrace
the tilted prayers
you breathed
out into the darkness –

such flames, such embers
pirouetting into the mouth
of the fragrant black sky –

given back to you as silken
cold laughter.

David Calogero Centorbi is from Detroit, Michigan. He is the author of Landscapes of You and Me (Alien Buddha Press) and After Falling into Disarray (Daily Drunk Press).

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An international online magazine that publishes Surrealist poetry in English. Issue Twelve DAVID CENTORBI The Space between Your Sighs scared me the most. In that stillness, I knew you hid fingernails and chalkboards. I knew I couldn't outrun the sound of that stillness, and I knew I couldn't stay – all I had were hands that wouldn't clench. So I held up the barrel of a dream: its open eyes wept pardons, its open mouth spoke forgetting. I said, "Can you see yourself here?" And you took my question, folded into a porcelain nightingale, threw into the air, and asked me to watch it try to fly. The Cracks of Knowing on the crying marble that folded its eye-filled fingers around the wet hunger I felt when I tried to embrace the tilted prayers you breathed out into the darkness – such flames, such embers pirouetting into the mouth of the fragrant black sky – given back to you as silken cold laughter. David Calogero Centorbi is from Detroit, Michigan. He is the author of Landscapes of You and Me (Alien Buddha Press) and After Falling into Disarray (Daily Drunk Press).
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