As
If You Could Kill Time
sparred another life
in the keyless window. Stranger, when it's
on the brink, the wincing beat, x looks like
mossed trees crowding the hall—
stepped into the swale
miniature ox
only moving in my mind
: paramount (the tender clocks)
laid out on all sides
I let the long gaze travel through me
spread past, to make ends
meet though there may be
no end in the unroofed
game of solitaire.
Your smile a spiral staircase
in the bright atlas, unshakeable, run
my finger along the apportioned axe
even the largest animals lie down in the snow
playing from time to time
Paloma Yannakakis is a Mexican-Greek-American poet who lives
and teaches in New York. Her poems appear in Lana Turner, Washington Square, Denver
Quarterly, Bodega, Green Mountains Review, SurVision, and Afternoon Visitor. She serves on
the editorial board of House Mountain Review. Her chapbook is Double Take (Finishing Line Press,
2023).