How the body doesn’t lie
        sometimes sweat
and uncontained breaths
a wind saying I don’t know
how to be here
in between these two guys
friends back seat Florida
trip patches of sandy side trees
tired birds migrating
thinking this is the American thing
look at us flying over bridges
look at us a pack
a murmuration a shrewdness
an unkind cluster
and I’m in the middle
and the body doesn’t lie
so when someone comments
on my armpits I open
my face to laugh and I
reach over to fully open
the window and I
look hard at the smell
of rain very very far away
and I don’t know how to be here

*    *    *

where it’s joyful it’s vacation it’s pretty
it’s wet it’s dark it’s grey
and the sun is cracked
and the landscape
is generous
I wanted to talk about summer
about riding in the back
stuck between two guys
my sweat and their laughs
my laugh an echo
corroding around us
instead I’ll talk about
big breath in the brain
a wind and no chimes
a stillness a dumbness
look at the birds
how they race
outside the car

*    *    *

sparrows fly low
rain is coming
yes it’s rain
nothing else
the earth my cracked skull
where wit should germ
it’s alright
I repeat to myself
as I laugh
and see the window
rust into itself
so when we arrive
somewhere new
I walk away for a while
as I am not a conspiracy
neither am I a school
or a richness damn
I wish I were a richness
but the body doesn’t lie
and the landscape feeds
me of what I don’t have

Marine Cornuet was born in the south of France. She is a poet, a translator, and an arts administrator currently based in Brooklyn. Her work can be found in Dime Show Review, 8-West Press, Handsy Lit, Yellow Chair Review, and other places. She is a proud member of Sweet Action, a women-led poetry collective that supports its members through the organization of workshops, readings, and the publishing of poetry samplers. Her first chapbook, Keeping the Chaff and the Wheat, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press.