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Syntax Issue 10
Denver Syntax
{no side to fall in}
  david mclean


no side to fall in
but whatever misses
this retention
of the feeble dead
inside me,
they turn restless
today in my fleshy coffin
and sleep uneasy

to wake tomorrow
holding cancer in hands
as weapons against
us, pain’s memory that feeds their
need,

bodies that forgot
the sheet and the
pillow and the
impressed bed
depressed by their
gravity, the waiting
twisting them under heaven,
years that stored piles
of self-pity in us
when compassion never extended its
ribbed and passioned hand
to the soil, the earth
under the borderland we walk
on, no side to fall in
as were we dead
already all history
a pinprick –
we are still