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  • Sestina
  • Sarah Crossland (bio)

Sestet on the Customs of Death

In the dream a handsilent as pressed azalea unbuttons your night-dress. As fair as water is, to wash the bodyfirst you must be dressed in honey, then in cloves. Allthere is to happiness, I have chastened to myliking: a silver bell, a clock, a bag of wheat pennies heavier than your eyes.

Sestet on the Mute Swan

It is not that Idid not learn my constellations once. The planetariast’s handtracing the cross of Cygnus on the ceiling, mymother, bathrobed, in a lace cardigan, taking me out into a nightclouded as green Depression glass—allthat I can ask now is where to look—where to find the heat of my own body.

Sestet I Have Remembered

We are always trying to fool our bodiesinto thinking we know better. When I was nine, it was Magic Eyepictures—tessellated starfish, astral violet shards, allembedded with an oak tree or an extended hand.Pressed into the cold-smelling paper, my vision blurred nightly—flat stone upon stone, calculated ivy, shadow and light, this sight academy.

Sestet for Catherine Chislova

There is always a need for extinguishers: gathered silt loamyat the palm’s center. The language of the candle is so unlike that of the body—wax dripped in the shape of an anchor means at nightthe man you love is faithful. His eyes [End Page 14] watching only the ogive arc of your handrising to écarté, your left calf straight and tapered as an awl.

Sestet Carried in a Hanging Pocket

Allday myhandsbecome less glassed to my body—like a bow window Ibend cold in the night.

Sestet at Johnstown, 1889

When the South Fork Dam rent, Anna Fenn Maxwell saw the wet nightof death—debris and fire carried on a curricle of waves—and gathered allher children, their hands like white deletions clinging to her dress. Fourteen little eyesclosing two by two, and after a moment, letting go. It is a density unfurled in infamy:Anna washing her elbows, the taste of accident on her tongue like blood, the bodiesof her children floating quietly in a circle. Her heart still beating beneath her own hand.

Tercet Disclosing the Conditions of Winter

If a potato when peeled reveals three eyes that beneath the tongue taste of night.If the hand laid flat on the kitchen table is all a map of morning could be.If my voice hunts you, if my body a sundial releases time in hot dark controllable breaths. [End Page 15]

Sarah Crossland

Sarah Crossland grew up in Manassas, Virginia, and received a BA in Story-telling from the University of Virginia. She is now pursuing an MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she serves as the Managing Editor and webmaster of Devil’s Lake. She is working on a book-length hybrid-genre retelling of the MGM musical classic Brigadoon. In her spare time, she teaches at Oakhill Correctional Institution and plays the harp.

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