a Perimeter 3

Lindsey Webb

I saw amazing systems that immediately buckled


I saw a light out the window through a hole in the curtain, a tiny suggestion. I approached the water trembling—I saw a window in the grass. Forgetting myself, I claimed knowledge is a vehicle between futures and saw the forest darken in argument. Did I discover a great monument; and, if so, what else? In a moment, water destroyed
………………………the sky, slamming upwards. Birds, dangerous in the trees, looked out. Birds, returning to water, kept going. My hand made a few gestures to explain: a scaffold, a wilderness. I saw the edge of the reeds. I saw one bird, misunderstanding my light, drop towards it.



Note: The title is from Lisa Robertson's R's Boat.

Lindsey Webb's work can be found in H_NGM_N, Jellyfish, inter|rupture, and TENDERLOIN. She co-edits elsewhere, a journal of prose poetry and short fiction. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at University of Massachusetts Amherst.