NakedProse poem first published in Lights #1 zine, from Pleasure Boat Studio, April 2020, page 96. Originally
written in April of 2006. +
It’s a story about my childhood, and I tell it to you on our first date because
you said you’d visited India last year. As a child, visiting Calcutta, I had seen
a dead baby, face down and covered with flies in a cardboard box, the box wet
from the muddy gutter it lay in. We share other memories, other details of
ourselves. You tell me of the time you climbed your brother’s favourite tree
and found a magazine stuffed into a hole, a National
Geographic with pictures of topless African women. Later that evening I
wonder if I’d always imagined my story from a picture in a magazine, and what
you meant by your story, what I meant by mine.
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