by J.D. Isip

Mourning or pretending. Just one more
hour for Miami, listening to the raucous
revelers necking and pawing their way
down to the ocean, watching the fireworks
while you slept, oblivious to it all—

A balcony at the Hard Rock, waiting on dawn,
trying not to take one last look at you, your
naked soles, calves, thighs, all those marathons
for an ass that doesn’t quit, the plane of back
blade to blade, no space for me. I can’t quit

reaching. We know the answer before we ask.
There is too much wisdom, too much damage
to be impressed by how it fell so easy, just
another idol body, to lose oneself again, and
again. There’s a relic of me in Mexico, kissing

the wind, a man, air in my hand. One in Rome
says to read him something that cleaves me
as he drives deep the chisel, the hidden tang
thrumming the handle in his hand. I wasn’t
finished praying at the altar of artifacts, pieces

of us where I left the oddments, looking for
you to call me back to bed, you to be there, for
a way to see you clumsy men, your wreckage, you
and me as intended. Excavation is a belief that
there is more to see beneath the rubble and debris.

J.D. Isip is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015) and Kissing the Wound (Moon Tide Press, 2023). This poem is part of a new project tentatively titled I Wasn’t Finished, which will be released by Moon Tide Press in late 2024 or early 2025. J.D. writes reviews and interviews, and acts as the microfiction editor for The Blue Mountain Review. He is a full-time English professor in Plano, Texas. J.D. is on Twitter @JDIsip and Facebook as J.D. Isip.