Seven Longs

1
Until the rubberband meets its limit

While the bent bow torments the arrow

Until the bungee jumper
rebounds up the sheer cliff

Until the phone

Until the shoe

Wait

2
Long isn’t a longer short
isn’t elongation

but a mix:
ahead, behind, beyond, to the side

3
She waits so long
the object of her waiting disappears

4
Long is the walk
clutching the babydoll
ICE let her keep—

its tangled plugs of hair,
bruised blushed cheek,
filthy feet

She stretches her shirt to cover
its naked pink skin

5
Define—that is, tell her

She doesn’t know
in any language, long or short

So young,
words are monochrome:
whispered lullaby,
clank of the steel cage door

Define, lie,
tell the one with the Elmo backpack
she will see her mother
before long

6
Measure in decades the nights
he will puncture the tent’s
canvas sky
for his daughter, mark
Jupiter, Mars, stars, Milky Way

7
She stands all day in their crosshairs,
standard issue Uzis,
the Wall’s razor-wire checkpoint

then shifts her wheezing baby
to her other shoulder,
tucks the hospital referral slip back
in her bag

and goes home
to return before dawn the next
and next day

Denise Bergman’s poetry books are The Shape of the Keyhole (Black Lawrence, 2020), Three Hands None (Black Lawrence, 2019), A Woman in Pieces Crossed a Sea (West End, 2014), The Telling (Cervena Barva, 2014), and Seeing Annie Sullivan (Cedar Hill, 2008). Visit denisebergman.com