The Poetry Project

POETRY

Vanessa Jimenez Gabb

from BASIC NEEDS

I will inherit money once.

Sometime next summer I am told. My father will be old enough and will pay the taxes on his teaching and it will be one sum and enough to buy a little land. Only for land. It is not for anything else.

My life will be not quite the same. I was thinking of you. I‘m moving to Hawaii for music. To write.
Forever grateful for you.
Men

I have known are changing their lives. Coming to life as a frontier.
To see the beginnings.

The obligatory conversation I have with myself. I am on a bluff wanting to get beyond. I am not
in New Orleans where the ladies are celebrating their marriages. It will be confusing. Not having
is the most explicable thing. Sound experiments. I am trying not to feel meaningless.

I climb into his lap and we look for each other a while without
Anything within the range of normal listening. Then I say the word Yes.
And he says the word Good. I think about how I got here. To a frame I don’t know. How could I
until I reach it.

#256 — October/November 2018

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