Paper Aubade

posted Nov 20, 2012

Without you, will there be no more folded cranes?
no more dog-eared corners?
no more traces of hands these words have passed through?

I have loved you
when I shouldn't have
fallen trees, mill towns
old growth clear-cut hillsides

I've loved you in secret
in sin, the taste
still in my mouth
the shame, sulfur sweet
you and me
inseparable, imperfect
beautiful in the right light
easily torn

Judy Halebsky’s book of poems, Sky=Empty, won the New Issues Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award. The MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, and the Japanese Ministry of Culture have supported her work. She lives in San Francisco and teaches at Dominican University of California.

We published Halebsky’s poem “Dark Matter, Pine Trees, Eternity, Room 205” in Issue 43.