Mutating Distance
Bonnie Stanard


 
Your comfortable distance
isn’t easy to estimate.
What do you mean by mutually acceptable space?
I keep the distance from your mouth
to my ear at its proper length.
Whether dressed or undressed,
your hints make frogs of forgiveness.
I can’t help but believe in paradise but,
in a way I don’t understand,
there’s trouble in the blanks.
 
The distance between us as we talk
is an art, you say, necessary
to successful interaction.
But it’s crimped with emptiness
and disbelief.
After a martini you speak
of the thread ahead and glass roads,
tinfoil travel, and lushing weather.
But who are you fooling?
Your address is in the throes of obscurity.
 
Your embrace delivers a realizing
and I question whether I’m a favor
or a donaton. Winter skin
sinks in from the back of everywhere
and there’s water beneath my feet.
The current below the freeze line
ebbs and flows.









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About the Author: Bonnie Stanard draws on her rural upbringing and an interest in history to write novels, short stories, and poems with credits in publications such as Persimmon Tree, Harpur Palate, The South Carolina Review, Slipstream and The Museum of Americana. She has published six historical fiction novels and a children’s book. She lives in South Carolina. Visit her website here.

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