Liana Woodward

Perceptible Trace Left By Pressure

Emma said we all have golden cobwebs behind our eyes
which only opthamologists know how see with machines
they also see disease
she didn’t say but I thought & ground deep instead
of saying we could keep grinding delicate shreds of lace
into our sockets until they ring I could be wrong
but casting eyes is like paper snowflakes unfolding flecks
& never properly cleaning the floor of all those impressions

midnight he & I with grains of warm light on us
the square of his mouth & pleasure laid over
like a stamp with blue ink or the underbelly of a lizard
I told him you can’t catch them in this heat
in the dirt running eyes closed

I’m not wrong even sobriety
has some after-haze of impairment projected
The acid reflex of college employment
standing on art gallery floors my eyes circling
designs on the oil speck concrete. I made them up
or they were dancing for me alone

the rabid dog of boredom in library stacks
the squares & triangles of light my eyes put out
shapes with sticky fingers that feed the dog
in between fortune & good housekeeping
I’m marking glossy pages with whetted mitts
give me some philsosophy to worship & pay for
rub my eyes & find black mascara crumbles
on my real skin & the crumbles of skin itself
I leave when I go

the light right now
in fall on the sidewalk I wear a black coat
felled with powdered sugar flakes
impress my comfort in eating the weather
letting me slide between the air & risen time
a last bite impermanent, a little breaded death

I know he doesn’t remember but the blinds shifted once
our supine frames & lit smooth lines over us
We didn’t say then but we would be twisting our fibers
together for years but we didn’t know so yet



Liana Woodward is a poet from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Montana, where she served as poetry editor for CutBank literary magazine. Her work has appeared in The West Review, Peach Mag, The Santa Fe Reporter, Hot Pink Magazine, and elsewhere.