stars drift. driftwood
ambles the crowded
surface. whence we
came running, where
we go mad as hornets
seek shade at the desert’s

edge—in the melting
tundra of our just-
desserts we grease into
shape, call the distance
from back then to
scattered now, falsely, far

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E.G. Cunningham is the author of Ex Domestica (C&R). Her work has appeared in Ambit, Colorado Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Nation, Poetry London, The Poetry Review, and other publications.