by Ali Beheler

I imagine waiting, assembling a loom
for you—two upright arms limning warp. I
imagine you gone, across sea, leaving
me left. I imagine how I would turn
thread of weft at hour’s edge, up toward air
to one more row of thread, one more hour of skin

of shroud laid down where I lie, for you. I’d skin
when sun laid down that shroud, ripped from loom,
threads dancing through my fingers through air
like waves lapping ship, tongue to lip or eye
to lid—unsheathed perfectly. When stars turn
to sun, I’d rise, turn to start again, leave

no trace of yesterday. For you, I would leave
an untouched room, bed unmade, my skin
empty womb, open door. I imagine it, turn
over in loose workspace of bone—sponges, looms
where marrow’s hung—hour by hour red-thread the eye
of platelets wefting warp, carrying air’s

breath of matter, matrix, mother: network where
form is made, delivered. I imagine leaving
nothing but that red unweaving through the eye,
through the hollow halls—follow my inside skin
to the outside. Tear through that deepest loom,
empty room whose floors and walls are shed, turned

to red—unwon month, unwound: blood volta.
Those waves of undone thread. They fall through air
and lie there    puddled, piled, luteal.    Looming
without hope in trail. Sloughed. Snuffed. Failure left.
Led through lens, where outline lands on retinal sheet
pulled between upstretched arms of iris

widening, faint pulse like an ovary eyeing
what’s in front of her: line’s end, no return
of him, of light impressing that face on skin
of concave wall, holding, remaking him. To err
by omission, over-awaiting, taking leave
of lineage, letting possibility loom

full, fruitless. All those months, hour-lined, may be a loom
left behind, a womb: soft of bone whose inner skin
makes blood. Son of song. Stanzas held up to air.

Ali Beheler’s recent work appears or is forthcoming in The Penn Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Harpur Palate, The Shore, Rogue Agent, ballast journal, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere. Winner of the SRPR Editor’s Prize and the Milton J. Kessler Memorial Prize in Poetry, she has received residencies from Sundress Academy for the Arts and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. She teaches at Hastings College in Hastings, NE. Find her at alibeheler.com.