Fugue

FUGUE / S. Ben-Tov You dreamed of severed arms and legs, bodies lying on a lake of steel, and woke at night. Like punishment the bowling alley rumbled under the bedroom; with your conscious arm you dragged the numbed one from her side, and made for home; your child's eyes were tipped with light, death's little knives, the determining choices; light burst the filament, the black contusion in the bulb; one lives the best one can. You wake at night, go running late in the woods—once, stopped short by a nightingale varying its song like the blending shades eluding repetition; you tell me it took a while to move on. Your eyes are tipped with light, your tongue is sweet, your feet are white, arched, a dark blue mark under the toenails from running in bad shoes, you tell me, handling the known novelties of solace with your eyes shut, body lying averted, caught in the web of hair spinning itself over the temples, in the first white curl of burnout, in this embrace where nothing moves. 38 ¦ The Missouri Review ...