—

dry body bed light
the house women smell the curve
her body closing—

our mother’s body
like my sister’s body my
body so yes we

reenter ash blows
her in our faces we throw
it on the wind from

Ragged Mountain I
live there again do I have
that nostalgia yes

do I know I have
it yes does that exculpate
me no do I know

it—live there again
call it home that opposite
place we smell her body

ending itself the
house they build by full of want
smell salt unwanting

what is disorganized
as a feeling attending
like a death needs

that nostalgia do
I wish she is not dead yes
does it undo me

yes does undoing
do yes I know no more than
that I think but think

it—we own it ten
years almost exactly in
Cushing U.S.A.

nervous for taxes
but in other ways how dear
yes it everything

is no but I have
that nostalgia no still no
but how do I get

to yes yes there is
only the no I live there
again I am wrong-

ly equipped she says
before she dies honey there
is no justice in

this world easy chair
flooding white tissue tipped red
itself can I love

her for it—can I
forgive her for it maybe
is it the same thing—

is that just—but is
it how it is—downwind dust’s
carcinogenic

living here again
yes I can’t say it’s that our
friends’ parents die where

in our bodies things
are already amiss we
know it in our smells

before and after
I mean in losing easy
what fear wants to take

every woman for
four generations has had
a breast nostalgia

yes is there a right
answer no have I got it—

Sarah Payne grew up in coastal Maine. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Sand, Gasher/Daily Doses, and Cathexis Northwest Press, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley.