Academy of American Poets Prize Award Co-Winner

This is a waterfall.

It is bending for you, not falling. This water

fall is melancholy in you, not a tumble. It

is weeping your mother or someone equally

unimportant while you’re moving boulders

carefully

over a pretty body not yours.

It is coming to an end, this matchstick,

and

bottomfindings

will gift you

A longing so

bottomfound.

Sifted hand. Mud silt

clearing through water. Afterstorm.

This is a memory.

This is a borrowed house and a dark

under-the-bed. It rises in you. Feel it?

It startles you toward moisture

lifting. Sudden sweating and a gasp of

real, none of this lover-air, something

familiar, a waterfall, a woman, alight,

something jumped yet

somehow

rising.