DOUBLING

Doubling
to Constance V. Plumley

I hear your true crime YouTube videos
in the living room, know you are less
than ten feet away, on the other side
of the wall. I can feel your leg
wrapped over mine the way it was
this morning, your hand on my chest,
breath against my neck.

Your presence in the next room still
lends these things to me hours later.

How two bodies that had been one linger
over one another, trace lines between them
long after physical contact ceases.
How we become more than “you” and “me”.

A Strong Breeze

when the top comes off
and spins in a lazy arc
to the scrunge of beer
and bootblack on the tile

the tack of its collision
is lost in the haze
of a generic cover band

already forgotten

Pulverize

The electromagnet is large enough
an entire football team cannot lift it

unaided, yet the boom swings
with abandon, almost glee. Drops it

onto the hood of a burned-out Chrysler.
The flick of a switch, and the air

around us thickens. Breath is effort.
The trace elements in our bodies yearn

to join what was once an auto as it
is carried to its coffin, the rust-

and-orange crusher. Again, switch
flicked, and a moment of relief

before the button is pressed, car
kneaded into a three-foot-square,

impossibly heavy cube.
I turned,
discovered my fingers entangled

in your hair. Your head back against me,
sweatshirt hugging your interior. Stray

sun reflected from your teeth, the corners
of your glasses catches my eye, draws it

to your fingers. One index against the button
of your coat. The other hand flicks the tab

of your zipper.
Breath is effort.

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry on unceded Mingo land (Akron, OH). He published his first poem in a non-vanity/non-school publication in November 1988, and it's been all downhill since. Recent/upcoming appearances in Nebo, OPEN: A Journal of Arts and Letters, and The River, among others.