SandScript 2022

Lag time
Shane Veno
It was cold on the porch so late
as Elizabeth and I sat opposite each other,
trying to strongarm a few more hours out of night.
The moon and the snow doing something
to her eyes that brought me close enough to see,
that whatever it was she was trying to transmit
to me, to be kept safe in the cataracted eye
embedded between my clavicles,
had, in the cold filling the space dividing us
refracted so
that I couldn't at first feel its remnants’ warmth
gently pulsating beneath my coat,
as we stumble-sprinted across that underpass in Manchester
to the Nouveau Brewery
where we sat on casks trying to listen to the band,
but that cataracted eye
was focused too solidly on her signal.
She avoided my eyes
as she ordered and drank
two glasses of white wine
in quick succession,
her transmission now returning to me
all sorrow and shame.
So we went out to the alley adjacent and
huddled together against a fence.
I passed her a hastily rolled cigarette
and when I received it back,
that eye inhaled the entirety of her aether and swelled
until it could repeat back:
What if there were a hidden pleasure
in calling one thing
by another’s name?
24
Crazy Jim
Mya Palacios
Black Ink Drawing
25