Listless Sonnet with Weight Gain
- Listless Sonnet with Weight Gain
For what it's worth I don't find you unattractive. Am I saying thisout loud? It's spilling like a bra with no lift. And mewith eyes so tired they blinked blizzards. Lucid, that's howI speak when I'm alone, especially in the showerwhen the neighbor upstairs thunks around. Forgive me,I've scribbled all over the page, trying to make it fit, scratched outthe numbers. For so long, for so long I've been reaching for youas if through clouds. Not fallen through but bounced upon. Their visualsplendor. I've given over to draping myself against armrests;the comfort of sonnets is rigidness.I landed on my head once, practicinga handspring in the school gym. My bodycouldn't turn quickly in a tight space. CoachRoddy came over and said "try it again." [End Page 210]
Ellen Kombiyil is the author of Histories of the Future Perfect (2015), and a micro-chapbook Avalanche Tunnel (2016). Recent work can be found in North American Review, Salt Hill, The Minnesota Review, and Ploughshares. She is a two-time winner of the Mary M. Fay Poetry Award from Hunter College, a recipient of an Academy of American Poets college prize, and was awarded the Nancy Dean Medieval Prize for an essay on the acoustic quality of Chaucer's poetics. She currently teaches creative writing at Hunter College.
