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And If There Was No Country by J. Mae Barizo

‘And they were a solemn people: naming / the world, mapping it out, arguing about what it meant. Clandestine as / husbands’

By J. Mae Barizo





from The Cumulus Effect




And if there was no country (the last sentence only, when he is kneeling
at her chest) there would be no memory, neither an others or one’s own.

How quick then, the mouth. And they were a solemn people: naming
the world, mapping it out, arguing about what it meant. Clandestine as

husbands, lamp-crash in the blood. So much to forget still. Wasn’t there
dawn-light already? Kissing sounds on the back of a hand, river smell.

How swift the city, how hot the globe.

Press your ear against the shoreline, my restless,
and let us love warily, remembering nothing.



Excerpt from the poem “The Cumulus Effect” is from THE CUMULUS EFFECT (c) 2015 by J. Mae Barizo. Appears with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.