strings
pull apart these stubborn ribs;
you’ll find the fear,
my body home
to little else; you said,
“I’m here,
you’re safe”—what is safety but
a net through which to fall?
if it’s true, love, why do I
keep redrawing maps
to claim an island as our own?
if you’re here, don’t
go, don’t
tell her, just
pull this feathered arrow from
my chest, put your ear to the rest
and hear vibrato shivers
all the way down; say, love,
do you need me now? if I weave all of
our words & graphs
songs & bones
into a sprawling net,
will it be strong enough
to hold
and true enough
to last?
Amy Dupcak is the author of Dust, Short Stories (2016) and has published fiction and creative nonfiction in Phoebe, Fringe, Litro, Sonora Review, Hypertext, and other journals. Her poetry has appeared in District Lit‘s ‘How To’ issue and is forthcoming in Pangyrus and in Alternative Field & Avenue 50 Studio’s ‘Poetry in Isolation’ chapbook. She earned her MFA in Fiction from The New School and has been leading creative and essay writing workshops at Writopia Lab in New York City since 2012, primarily working with teens. She also teaches fiction and poetry for adults at The Writer’s Rock, acts as an assistant editor of Cagibi Journal, and co-edited an anthology for the long-running literary and performance series Lyrics, Lit & Liquor.
