saint of sepulture
It’s the summer again. It wants me. How overgrown of ivy, how empty and
full of longing. My memories of it are daisy chain; honey-like, and looming
through the years. As eave, as curtain, as decanter. One day it is a summer
day, & then it 10 summers ago. The summer takes me hard by hand,
watches me from the other room. How it took me from me, made my body
into a cavity, wringing the wet from my lips. What gash it left me tending.
The summer was always waiting, a waiting,
a wait,
wait,
wait.
It wanted me, hunted me. And when the hunt found me it was still hungry. How I heaved my loaded heart. I walked into the wood and never came out; a too-long sort of night. It was the kind that sends you back in fragments. Which fragments? It could have been daylight. It should have been daylight. It could have been. It could have been me in the window, and then me in the lake, and then me in the rose grove and then yesterday.
Saint of earthly things
I have loved so many January men.
Is it their hands, their hands twisting in the earth?
Is it their earth?
Is the sea only the sea because the earth holds it,
or is the earth only the earth because it is not the sea?
I till, I till until I fall back into cotton sheets
with the sun on my face as voyeur.
I want to get dirty up to my elbows with it. Want the roots
of the tree to suckle the back of my neck.
I am always
in a tempest.
I wear a sacred heart against my chest in a bid.
I’m asking for it. For the terroir to fuck me up
with the heavy wood of time.
God, it thrills to try and flood the immovable.
I’m asking the dirt
to sing ever louder.
I’m the girl who collects the excrement.
I’m the girl who cleans the sapphires in the lake.
I lower myself down into the well, down
into the beneath, down
in the dark marshes
where I pin up my hair and cry out.
Give me a root that can withstand it.
Give me your caprine summer.
Lisa Marie Basile is the author of a few books of nonfiction and poetry, including Light Magic for Dark Times, Andalucia, and Nympholepsy. Her work can be found in The New York Times,  Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Best Small Fictions, Narratively, Burning House Press, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Account, and more. Lisa Marie has an MFA from The New School and is the editor of Luna Luna.Â