Telescope

By Cat Dixon

This poem is a lens, no,

a mirror with its tarnished corners

and cracked edge. Each letter

I’ve scribbled blurs—speckled

gray. The words fluctuate.

On first read, the last

line ends in love, later

                 it’s hue.          Together becomes

                             tether.                        Splinter fuzzes

                                                                                  into          split.

Attempt to scrub

the glass with your hot breath

and hand. Fog clouds the page

and (by mistake?) you erase

                                     a word there

                                                     a line here,

and this is now found

poetry. Title and claim

it as your own.

*

Cat Dixon is the author of EVA and TOO HEAVY TO CARRY (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016, 2014) and her chapbook, THE BOOK OF LEVINSON, was published in July 2017 by Finishing Line Press. She teaches creative writing part-time at the University of Nebraska. She has poems (co-written with Trent Walters) in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). 

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