Issue 50: Summer 2020

Loss +

As far as accounting goes it goes Cornflakes. It goes cucumbers and/ cigarettes.

 

As far as accounting goes it goes Cornflakes. It goes cucumbers and cigarettes.
It goes count the women concerned with counting: Coleman, Beatty, Niedecker, 
Lorine’s neat but never nice haiku. Five and seven. Weighted silver. Affixed.

Some man stamps my chequebook while economy presses my linear dress.
Wave and wave and man. Sleep to count sheep. All this talk of Patek Philippe—
thirty thou’ to a hundred thou’ ’nother hundred thou’ . . . . Static is counting

on me to be countable. Lose that oscillating digit. A country’s objects smoothed
and folded over the wet heart, squinting. My fingers, an abacus of light.
What do we expect of lineage but to amount? I get this Desire on discount.

About the author

Zoe Imani Sharpe is a poet, essayist, and author of the chapbook Sullied (Trapshot Archives). Her writing has appeared in Lemon Hound, Muse Medusa, Vallum, Main Street, Room, and elsewhere.