surge
SARA DUDO
I never see it: the scanned image,
a chest a blackened sea
hosting ocean liners,
lights clustering, too wedged into each other
to sail a yard.
Lying my head against the dip of his rib cage:
I never hear the bulbs of sugar
sprouting
out of his channels,
pressing, blooming against water walls.
I feel it: the hard buoys of lymph nodes.
He takes my finger to his neck,
and guides it over the surface,
knots rolling in stubborn waves.
first dance at twenty-two
SARA DUDO
His organs spit at the Adriamycin,
coil up speckled stones of nausea,
/trickling slate down the slope of his gut/
while my lungs flip images right-side up
in the warmth of his neck streaming down my throat.
Shining off candlelight of rose-petaled wedding wax
floating in gilded ponds at table centers,
the slow shuffle of dress shoes bites
at his waterboarded calves soaking up IV fluid
/in mid-July, mosquito larvae twitching in rancid water/
The press of his black tie, navy blue cotton shirt,
a body being broken down against mine
like ambling river and low-set sky,
small swaying
/as shattered spiderwebs off
a summer fan in sunstroked air with nowhere to float but/
down.
Sara Dudo grew up in the rural farmlands and on the coast of South Jersey. She is currently going into her second year at University of Nevada Las Vegas in the MFA program as a student and Graduate Assistant. She loves to read about travel, rural life, and women’s rights. She has been recently published in Toho Journal, Permafrost, Red Rock Review, and Southwestern Review.