You have a beautiful mouth,
Luigi, the man-boy says.
The rubber raft
has floated far
from shore.
The choice
is this:
medusa sea,
a boil
of jellied lashes,
or
face
the kiss.
Source: Poetry (February 2013).
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This poem originally appeared in the February 2013 issue of Poetry magazine
Eliza Griswold is a poet and reporter whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and the New Republic. Her books include the poetry collection Wideawake Field (2007) and the non-fiction title The Tenth Parallel (2010), which examines Christianity and Islam in Asia and Africa. In 2010, Griswold won the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome for her poetry, and in 2011, . . .
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