Sea-green eyes, skin 

            the color of dust, I 

 

come from a long line of fire 

            signs.  We seed 

 

the open field 

            in our mind, before 

 

the soil has seen 

            a single harrow 

 

whose moon cold metal 

            teeth drag root, 

 

stone and grass up by the hair

            to make the soil finer, 

 

fit for this

            seed.  Generation after generation

 

we have gotten as far as the fantasy 

            and no farther.  I grow up thinking

 

marriage is a field.  I balk at

            the barrenness of that

 

field and balk, also, at the plow.

            My shoulders are slight.  

 

Hands, then, be strong:   

            lower the beam my love has made

 

easy.

 

|||

 

 

Julia Guez is the author of In an Invisible Glass Case Which Is Also a Frame (Four Way Books, 2019). Her poetry, prose and translations have appeared in Poetry, Guernica, The Guardian, Kenyon Review, PEN Poetry Series and the Brooklyn Rail. Four Way Books will be releasing her next book, The Certain Body, in 2022.  Guez teaches creative writing at Rutgers.  She also serves as the senior managing director of program design and implementation at Teach For America New York. Guez lives in Brooklyn and online at www.juliaguez.net. (PHOTO BY WESLEY MANN)

Guez has previously had her work published in TLR’s Game Theory issue.

 

 

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